The Golden Torc

by Julian May

  A crash resounded as a wall came down—fortunately falling in toward the torc factory and not into the corridor. The meta-powered jewel-lamps along the walls had all gone out and the only light now came from the glowing armor of the Tanu, the bursts of astral flame, and occasional puddles of molten slag. The place was thick with smoke. Amerie fell to her knees and sought air along the floor. Things lay there—shattered blocks of limestone, metal lamp-fittings, pieces of jeweled and bronze armor, and softer dark masses that glistened and oozed.

  Amerie crept slowly through smoky hell. Uwe Guldenzopf's bearded face shone momentarily in a lurid blaze. His head lay close to the wall. There was no body.

  Sobbing, still carrying her iron-tipped spear, she followed the wall. There were more detonations behind her and a noise like an avalanche. A female voice uttered awful whooping shrieks like a warning siren. A great glowing rose-colored form went soaring over her head toward the center of the tumult—then another that shone green and white. The mental bombardment increased. She flattened herself on the floor, beyond praying. One of her feet was completely numb. The corridor was filled with a brain-blasting throb that made her teeth and even her eyes respond in a harmonic of sympathetic pain. The fumes and fire diminished, as suddenly the whole scene retreated to a distance. She floated above her body—poor thing—and saw that one leather boot was burned black, still smoking, and the sooty bronze of her cuirass backpiece had a deep indentation above the area of her kidneys. Her right arm was raw from elbow to wrist and there was a glimmer of white bone.

  "What are you waiting for, angel?" she asked testily.

  But she did not die. Taking up residence in the battered thing lying on the floor once again, she let her eyes open. She saw a short human figure in shining blue armor standing over her.

  "Well, I'm glad to see you!" she shouted, joyous in relief. "Did we win after all?"

  One jeweled gauntlet raised the blue visor. A man with a large nose and humorous eyes looked down at her, smiling with small, perfect teeth. She had never seen him before.

  "You did not win," said Gomnol.

  Amerie felt her damaged body rise from the floor, sustained by the Lord Coercer's psychokinetic power. He walked back into the inferno with her drifting after him like some grotesque balloon-doll. The smoke was pushed away before him and little flames extinguished themselves as he passed. A radiance streamed from Gomnol's face, illuminating the ruins. There were giant motionless forms clad in dulled glass lying here and there, and smaller shapes. She saw Vanda-Jo, mouth still wide in her last silent scream; Gert and Hansi, mated in death as in life, were crushed beneath a stone lintel. Khalid Khan sat against a wall looking like a parody of a pieta, a Tanu warrior spitted by an iron spear cradled in his dead arms. "Salaam aleikoum, bhai," she whispered, and Khalid was lost in the dark.

  "Only superficial damage to the factory itself," Gomnol remarked in a pleased tone. "It was stupid of me not to have foreseen this contingency. It's going to be a great bore having to express gratitude to the Host for having saved my bacon, especially since you people seem to have killed a number of them. Ah, well. No real harm done."

  A sunburst of rainbow light now shone in the murk ahead. Amerie heard a deafening voice intone: "Welcome, Lord Coercer! Better late than never."

  Gomnol came into the area where the bronze doors had been. The last rags of smoke and vapor dissipated. Dozens of brilliantly gleaming knights were standing about in negligent attitudes, leaning upon broadswords or glass lances. Chief Burke and Basil, burned and bloody, wrapped from ankle to neck in glass chain, hunched on their knees at the feet of a ruby-armored demigod. And Felice was there, flat on the floor, helmet off, eyes shut, face and neck colorless except for the soft gleaming of the golden torc and the shine of her hair.

  Gomnol sent Amerie floating toward the other prisoners and lowered her softly. To the blue titan who had addressed him, he said, "Our thanks to you, Brother Imidol, to Lord Culluket, and to all the members of your Host. A timely intervention, indeed. I see that the torc factory suffered no serious harm."

  "It is quite safe."

  "Splendid!" A small golden container at Gomnol's waist popped open and a cigar emerged. The Lord Coercer bit off the end, ignited the tobacco with psychoenergy, and blew a fragrant plume toward the ruined ceiling with a fine air of savoir-vivre.

  "My own sources of information had made me aware of a possible sabotage attempt tonight," he said. "Unfortunately, we were misled into believing that the invaders would try to penetrate from the rear of the keep. My forces were in ambush there. Lord Bormol and the Lord of Swords had kindly volunteered to watch with us. They should be here at any moment."

  Gomnol swept the massed force of the Host with a confident glance. "If you permit, I'll relieve you of the tedium of the mopping-up operation. Redactors are on their way to succor our fallen brethren. Those who are not too badly injured will surely be out of the Skin in time for the Combat."

  Imidol's glaring face was as carved from rock crystal. "We have lost fifteen of our sacred number to the iron. They rest in Tana's peace, beyond the help of the Skin."

  Gomnol frowned, studying the tip of his cigar. "Terrible! Monstrous!" He gestured at Felice. "But I see you have avenged yourselves on the Lowlife woman."

  "She is not dead," said ruby-clad Culluket. "I have her in mental bondage. Our revenge will be taken in due time."

  "Aye," said all the others. "Revenge against all traitors."

  Gomnol stood stark still. Smoke from the cigar curled playfully in the air currents entering through the breached ceiling.

  "This woman showed a formidable psychoenergy," said Imidol.

  "Much greater than any of us could have anticipated," Culluket added. "She killed three of our company by her mind's power alone."

  "It was only with the greatest difficulty that we all combined and subdued her," came the concerted voices of the rose-gold twins, Kuhal and Fian.

  "But not," Imidol concluded, "before she had perpetrated one final crime—you understand that this is what we shall say."

  The Host blazed brighter and brighter. A certain insinuation of the Second Coercer took unmistakable form within the massed minds.

  "Stop!" Gomnol cried. The mightiness of his metapsychic power roared out to prevent them, to fend them off while shielding his soul from the combined stroke of forty-seven exotic minds focused through the hatred and jealousy of Imidol, son of Nontusvel and the Thagdal, who would surely be named Lord Coercer by acclamation once the human usurper was dead.

  "You cannot..." came the agonized gasp of Eusebio Gomez-Nolan, "you cannot ... combine against a brother. Tana forbids it!"

  No brother you but a HUMAN and a traitor and a conniver with the monster Aiken Drum we know it we are sure so die ... die...

  "No proof! No ... proof!" Gomnol's body twisted, the spine bowed backward in tetany. He fell in his armor as heavily as if he had been turned to stone.

  Imidol cried out, "We of the Host have our proof! Proof for the others may come later. For now you will seem to die a hero—last victim of the monster Felice—until it suits us to reveal the full fabric of your treachery! Die, Manipulator. Die."

  A last sound came from Gomnol's mouth. The contorted limbs relaxed. The face within the bizarre sapphire globe of his helmet went gray, then white. A skull with perfect teeth grinned at the Host of Nontusvel. The cigar on the floor beside it consumed itself in fragrant patience.

  ***

  Culluket the Interrogator placed gray torcs around the necks of Amerie, Chief Burke, and Basil. And then the mountain climber, who of the three badly wounded prisoners retained the most strength, was forced to take an iron blade and sever Felice's golden torc.

  "No gray for her?" Imidol inquired.

  "Later," the Interrogator said. "It taints the pleasure if I make things too easy for myself."

  16

  HELPING HIMSELF to early bugs, the nightjar whipped around the predawn sky. Behind the foothills of the Jura the
sky was already pink. Mobs of herbivores down on the plateau were stirring. There was activity in Castle Gateway, too—but, maddeningly, no trace of any invisible human skulkers anywhere.

  The nightjar made a futile low pass. It was a bloody nuisance that he hadn't been able to locate Claude and Madame yet. They had to be hiding underground. No doubt with Madame's illusion-spinning creativity reinforcing the natural psychic shield of the dense granite and hard-baked soil. But they'd have to come out to make the sortie against the time-gate. And when they did, he'd nab 'em.

  As yet, none of the castle personnel knew that Aiken had arrived. He'd flown right up the valley of the Rhône, stashed the Spear in the upper branches of a big old plane tree down on the bottoms, and winged it on up here to do the search. Who noticed whether or not a nightjar flew around in the daytime? He'd hoped to spot their hideout, turn back into himself, and lead a castle search party right to the spot {tah-dah!).

  But the damned old love-birds had foiled him. Ah, well.

  It was really kind of cute, when you thought about it. Weird, but cute. (I mean—of course they couldn't. Could they? A hundred and thirty-three?) It was kind of a shame they couldn't have been content to Darby-and-Joan it off in the Hercynian Forest somewhere with the munchkins instead of messing around in the games of the big boys.

  But there it was. No helping 'em now. But he'd zap quick and merciful so at least they'd be spared getting dragged down to the Grand Combat and distilled alive in that glass thing the Tanu fancied for traitors. Gomnol had tried to convince Aiken that the ceremonial death of the old folks was strategically necessary. (He would think so.) But to hell with him! Gumball's sadism would have to be content with the two old heads on pikes.

  Aha! Activity again. The main gate of the castle was opening. Plenty of soldiers coming out, in addition to the white-garbed portal keepers. Just about dawn, too.

  He banked, hunched his wings to stall, and plummeted down to keep an eye on things.

  Above him, gray on gray-pink and outlined in mallow on the sunward side, was a strange cumulus cloud. Its bottom sagged in udder-like formations. One of the bags elongated like a vaporous Tanu breast as turbulence within the cloud increased. The bag stretched lower, became a dangling sleeve, then a miniature tornado with vortex winds spinning at several hundred kilometers an hour. It twisted and groped through the air, humming loudly. But morning winds were keening over the plateau and the people on the ground did not notice the new sound. They gathered formally about an area of bare rock.

  The nightjar did not observe the little tornado either—not until it vacuumed him up, spun him off with a great tangential toss, and landed him in a nearly dry waterhole some three kilometers away ... The stunned trickster regained consciousness a few minutes later and sat cursing the solicitous little hipparions that came to nuzzle his muddy face.

  And then his mind flinched from a far, far obliteration of a familiar psychic pattern; and he knew about Gomnol. By the time he pulled himself together and flew back to the time-gate, it was too late there as well.

  ***

  "Chéri, the time has come," she said.

  He stretched, yawned, smoothed his silver hair back, then reached out and caught her by the wrists.

  "Fou," she whispered, when she was able.

  "We both are. We make a pair—like antique bookends."

  She laughed softly, but that brought on the coughing which she had been at such pains to suppress. And there was blood. He said, "How long has this gone on? Angélique—why didn't you tell me?"

  "I have taken Amerie's medicines. What else was there to do? You would have been made anxious for nothing. Say no more about it! It is time to go. And soon it will not matter. "

  "Goddammit, we'll get away!" he insisted, voice all raspy.

  She kept back as he removed the top course of granite rocks from the wall, and enough from the center of the barricade so that the two of them would be able to squeeze out. An undermined acacia tree sagged down like a curtain in front of the opening. Beyond was the deep dry watercourse where she had first found shelter in the Pliocene Exile some four years earlier.

  It had been Claude's idea to hide in this place, not even a kilometer away from the time-gate area. Under cover of her illusion of invisibility, they had come six days earlier during the hours that the moon was down and burrowed into the arroyo wall, enlarging the hole that had already been formed by the roots of the scraggly tree. They had walled themselves in with boulders from the streambed. From time to time during the nights, when her metapsychic senses told them that it was safe, they would venture out. The hole had been enlarged into a chamber nearly head-high, three meters long and two deep. It had suited them.

  As they crept from the place for the last time, Claude heard her half-joking little murmur of farewell: "Adieu, petite grotte d'amour."

  He said, "Two old spiders in their hole, you mean. But you didn't devour me, ma vieille! Still—it's just as well our time was short."

  "It sufficed," said she, mind all asmile. "But now I think we have both reached the point of plus qu'il n'en faut ... more than enough."

  She handed him the amber with the message she had signed, then covered them both with her mental cloak. They scrambled up the steep wall. The surface of the savanna was fully four meters higher than the streambed. No one from the castle could have been able to farsense their hiding place, not unless there was a powerful metapsychic deliberately searching for them and alert for her illusion. They had only a short distance to walk and moments to wait before they fulfilled the duty they had set for themselves. And then, back to the hiding place, where they would hope for the best, should the alarm be raised...

  Last night—or rather early on this morning—they had tried to find out what had happened to the saboteurs. Madame had sent her mind's ear straining over the long kilometers that separated them from the Balearic Peninsula ... But the distant mumble refused to fine-tune. She could not hear and dared not call. And so the two of them had simply prayed for their friends, made love again, and slept. She muffled her coughing in the blankets. Her mental alarm woke them at the preselected time.

  As evanescent as morning wind, they approached the crowd of people near the time-portal. In the east, the sky was now greenish yellow and the day would be hot. (But their cave had been cool, and they had had plenty of water and food and the soft decamole couches, and so the brief days had passed without effort. He had told her about Gen and she had told him about Théo, and then they had explored one another as only the wise old ones can, the lucky ones who are still strong and alive to danger—for the adrenals hold the great secret of old lovers, but only for those who are brave.)

  They were almost at the gate. It was nearly time.

  ...And the world around them abruptly turned black.

  Both of them cried out. The sound did not propagate. They seemed to stand yet on solid ground, but all around was darkness ... until there came a pinprick of light that swelled to a sun, to a glowing face, to the face of Apollo.

  "I am Nodonn."

  Well, it's finished, Claude told himself. And now she'll die with the guilt.

  A voice was speaking aloud. They knew that no one heard it but themselves. "I know who you are and what you would do. I have decided there must be an end to you and your meddling."

  Angélique's thought was resigned: You Tanu have won this time. You may kill us, but others will come to shut this devil's gate.

  "They will not," said Nodonn, "because I have chosen you." The flaming mask was enormous, its mind-light numbing. "My people have never understood the great harm you did to us in opening this way across the aeons. They would brook no interference with it. Not even I dared to close the time-gate by force. But now there is another way. You will do my will and at the same time achieve those goals you have set for yourselves. The goals you have both sought ever since coming to this Exile. I presume you understand."

  Claude replied: We understand, all right.

  "My
people will believe that you two alone are responsible for the closure. The supposed calamity will be more acceptable to them when they learn that the insurgent leader and the man who bombarded Finiah have been removed from the Many-Colored Land ... But you know that I cannot coerce you into this final deed. The torced guardians at the gate would detect my intervention. And so you will have to act freely—and visibly."

  She said: Yes. It will be the ultimate proof to those at the other end of the gate.

  Claude said: And I'm glad I blasted your damned slave-city! Maybe you think closing this time-gate will make you Tanu safe from any more human uprisings. You're in for a disappointment! Things are never going to be the same here again.

  The sun-bright face darkened. Nodonn's voice rolled in their minds. "Go back where you came from, accursed!"

  Claude said: You fool. We came from here.

  And then their human ears heard birdsong again. The true solar disk was breaking over the rim of the highland beyond the Rhône. Not a stone's throw away, a shimmering block hung in the air just above the square of stones where the portal guardians and soldiers waited.

  Their illusion of invisibility still intact, the two old people began to run over the dry sod. Four human time-travelers materialized within the tau-field and were assisted to alight.

  Angélique stumbled. Claude seized her hand, shoving aside soldiers and bewildered timefarers.

  "Jump for it before it recycles!"

  One of the armed guards gave a shout and rushed forward, waving his bronze sword. Fully visible, the old man and woman stood side by side in midair, hands linked. The temporal field reversed itself and they disappeared.

  In the sky above, a nightjar shrilled its furious kutuk-kutuk-kutuk and flew away.

  ***

  Only one of the auberge clients whose trip had been so unexpectedly aborted was not suffering hysterics. Still holding his plankton net and sack of specimen bottles, he answered Counselor Mishima's questions warily.