The Golden Torc

by Julian May

  "They were just standing there, I tell you. We only saw them for a split second when those mirrors in the machine's walls cut off. And then they were skeletons! And then dust ... I really must demand an explanation, Counselor. The brochure states most emphatically that there is no hazard in the journey through time—"

  One of the other counselors, kneeling in front of the gazebo, broke in. "Alan, come and look at this."

  Mishima said, "Please go upstairs and wait with the others, Dr. Billings. I'll be with you in just a moment."

  When the man had gone the two counselors bent over the pile of ashy powder. There was a peculiar gold ornament half-buried in it, a kind of barbarian necklet. When Mishima lifted it, glittering flakes—all that remained of the internal components—sifted from small openings and mingled with the dust.

  "And here ... oh, God." The other counselor had discovered the two flat pieces of amber. The writing was clearly visible within. "We—we'd better rush these things up to the director, Alan."

  Mishima sighed. "Yes. And tell that Billings chap and the others that they needn't wait after all."

  The twin rings carved from jet were not discovered until later, when the gazebo's dust was reverently swept up to be stored—until the investigatory panel's work should be finished—in a durofilm sack in the auberge director's safe.

  ***

  Six million years away, in the room without doors, Elizabeth and Brede wept. Foreknowledge, as Elizabeth had suspected all along, had only made it worse.

  ***

  THE END OF PART TWO

  PART III

  The Grand Combat

  1

  BY THE TIME of the Galactic Milieu the mountain was worn away to a remnant. It rose from the Mediterranean as the island of Menorca, easternmost of the archipelago that had been called the Hesperides. Monte del Toro, not 400 meters above the sea, marked its greatest eminence on eroded Elder Earth. Most of its ancient labyrinth of caves had by then been opened to the sun by wearing elements or, in the case of the deeper caverns, drowned by the encroaching sea.

  But six million years in the past, the mountain had another aspect. When exotic newcomers to the Balearic Peninsula first saw its shadowed mass with the twin crags flanking a summit meadow (where Bryan and Mercy would lie), they named it the Mount of Lugonn and Sharn—after the Tanu and Firvulag champions who had fought their ritual battle at the Ship's Grave. Later, the mountain was simply called the Mount of Heroes. By a rare express command of Brede, it was made the property of the Guild of Redactors. Their college of healing and mind-exploration was built on the southeastern slope overlooking Muriah and the White Silver Plain. After the Times of Unrest and the banishment of Minanonn, the very caves within the mountain were annexed—at first to serve as secure crypts for the interment of the Great Ones, and latterly for far less sacred purposes.

  Felice had vowed to herself that she would never cry aloud.

  Her mind's voice might rage and the Interrogator laugh; but somehow, through all the days, she remained steadfast and never uttered a sound through the jaws wedged open. She had willed this one thing: paralysis of her vocal cords; and they of all her betraying flesh had obeyed.

  Culluket had gone slowly, learning her, utilizing both redaction and coercive power, now strumming like an artist, now thumping with overwhelming crude malice. And if the sensory overload sent her into fugue, he coaxed her back with tweaks at the core of the brainstem to restore full-alert wakefulness when it was time for the next refinement to be demonstrated.

  Mental humiliation of her, he had discovered to his surprise, was not nearly so effective as the purely physical assaults upon her feminine dignity. But she was still a child, of course. A perverted child. She had yielded up the required information rather quickly (the Spear of Lugonn in the possession of Aiken Drum, the Ship's Grave and its trove of flying machines, the schemes for producing iron weapons, the fortified villages abuilding in the north); and the data were sent to Nodonn so that action could be taken following the Grand Combat.

  That had satisfied the others of the Host, leaving Culluket free to satisfy himself.

  To peel open her mind slowly, like a fruit, so that he could observe and then savor all of the strange humors of the alien murderess. Her secret horrors, the massive psychic wound from the loss of her golden torc (and yet that not as devastating as one might have expected), the monstrous metapsychic faculties for coercion, psychokinesis, creativity, farsensing, now walled up and latent like ravening beasts in squeeze-traps, never to be freed again.

  Taste the rage! Watch the agony deepen at the forced sharing.

  Flay, open to reveal the unsatisfied needs, the infant deprivation short-circuiting the pleasure and the violence pathways deep within the cerebellum. Delicious possibilities there! Realize them. Replay from multiple vantage points the filth, until even she, wretched Low-life, understands her own vileness. Inhumanity proven by a nonhuman male, exquisitely skilled.

  He worked her, shock following shock, pain piled upon pain, her body's degradation translated into maceration of ego; her hatred and fear of other beings clarified as hatred and fear of her self.

  Leave her bereft of everything she has ever valued, waiting for dissolution. (Her body had to be unharmed, of course; but he would fulfill his promise to the Battlemaster if he delivered her able to fight in the Combat as a petit-mal automaton.)

  But she would not go mad.

  Piqued, he rummaged in the wreckage, trying to discover the explanation. He almost missed it. But there—a minute spark barricaded within a stubborn shell of screening that resisted all his attempts at puncture. Diminished and encapsulated, the being that was Felice continued to abide.

  If only he could make her speak, cry out! That was the way, the key. He knew it! One voluntary sound and the last defense would fall.

  But she would not. After days had passed and the Combat was almost upon them, he dared go no further for fear of extinguishing life, along with that stubborn remnant of shielded identity.

  "Keep it, then," he said, "for what good it will do you."

  And after pleasuring himself with her one final time, he clamped the gray torc of slavery around her neck, released her jaws, and had the attendants take her away to a cell in the deepest of the catacombs.

  ***

  ...Steinie?

  Lovelove you're awake. "Does it still hurt, Sue?"

  He knelt on the damp stone floor next to the niche with its straw-stuffed mattress and took her by the hand. There was just enough light to see her, cast by the single Tanu jewel-lamp set like a sad star in the high ceiling of the cell, surrounded by stalactites.

  "There's only a leftover ache now. I'll be all right. Lord Dionket said there was no permanent damage. We'll be able to have others later on."

  But not him Sukey not my first unbornson. "It must have been my fault. We shouldn't have ... after we were sure you were pregnant." Stupidstupidselfishprickbabykiller!

  "No!" She struggled up, sitting on the edge of the stone bed and taking his face to kiss. "Never think it was your fault. I'm certain it wasn't." (And will the certainty into his mind through the silver torc still worn; but hide the reality, O never let him find that out.) "You must stop thinking about it now, love. Get ready for the escape! The Combat starts tomorrow. I'm sure that Aiken has waited until the last minute so that the Tanu won't bother to come after us."

  Stein growled deep in his chest. He shook his head, like a bear warding off attacking bees. Alarmed, Sukey perceived the random neural firing within his brain that signaled the onset of a spasm induced by his maladaptation to the gray torc.

  "Damn Aiken Drum," Stein groaned. "He said ... he promised ... but first you, now me... Christ, Sukey, my skull's exploding—"

  She held his head to her breast and plunged within his mind, as she had at ever-shorter intervals during their time in Muriah. Once again, she was successful in stopping the threatened conflagration. But if the torc stayed on him much longer, he would no
t survive.

  "There, Steinie. There, love. I've got you. I've fixed it."

  Water dripped from the ceiling of their prison cell—regular, musical. The wild beating of Stein's heart slowed and his rough exhalations eased. He lifted his head to meet his wife's eyes.

  "You're sure that it wasn't my fault?"

  "Believe me. It wasn't. Sometimes these things just happen."

  Still kneeling beside her, he sank back to rest on his heels, great helpless hands turned palms up, the image of a shattered giant. But Sukey was not deceived. She could see into his mind.

  If he could not blame himself, he would look elsewhere.

  ***

  Aiken Drum hoisted the heavy Spear of Lugonn easily, menacing the ornate chandelier in Mayvar's audience chamber in the Hall of Farsensors. The glassy lance shone golden, now that the last of the disguising blue lacquer had been cleaned from it. The powerpack was fully charged.

  "Take that for your yoni, witch!" he chortled, striking a wicked pose.

  Mayvar's smile was indulgent. "Tomorrow, my Shining One. Tomorrow it all begins. But there will be five days of it, remember. And you can use the Spear only at the very end, after midnight on the fifth day when the Heroic Encounters take place, and even then only if Nodonn decides to use the Sword. And if you survive to meet the Battlemaster at all—"

  "If? If?" he squealed in mock fury. "You clapped-out old seeress! Are you going to renege on your own Making? Do I have to prove myself to you again?"

  He cast down the photonic weapon with a ringing clang and launched himself, suddenly naked as a fish, at the scarecrow figure lounging on the amethyst throne. There was no one else in the chamber and the seat of power was quite large enough for two.

  "Enough ... enough!" she wheezed, laughing until tears trickled through the furrows of her cheeks. "At least let me live to share the triumph and give you your name!"

  He let her go, still feigning vexation at her apparent lack of confidence. Perched on purple velvet cushions with his legs crossed, he stuck two fingers under his golden torc and pulled. The metal stretched like an elastic band, then sagged as limp as half-pulled taffy. He began to fling the gold about, spinning it thinner and thinner, catching loops of it on the toes of each bare foot and weaving cat's cradles with the flexible filament that had been a golden torc.

  "So doubt me, Hag! And I'll give back this silly gift of yours and go my own way. Who needs you? I've got my quiverful of powers all honed and ready at last and I'm a match for any of 'em now! Bring on the Firvulag spooks! Bring on Thagdal and Nodonn!"

  "If you would be king, you must play by their rules," she said flatly. "If they suspect that you are fully operant without the torc they may yet combine against you. And strong as you have become, my Shining One, the massed minds of the battle-company could kill you, given the incentive."

  "The fighters are crazy about me. And the ladies think I'm cute!"

  "But the Host spreads rumors. They say you co-conspired with Gomnol and Felice's saboteurs. They say that your inept handling led to the closing of the time-gate. Far more ominous, they say that you would mate with the operant woman Elizabeth and engender a race of fully operant humans here in the Many-Colored Land."

  "Me and the Ice Lady? What a detumefying thought!"

  His smirk was as jaunty as ever, but the golden skein melted back into a circle, which he replaced about his neck. He began to put his suit of many pockets back on. "But you may have a point at that. A good thing Elizabeth is about ready to pack it in and fly. I can't understand why she's hung around this long. Not unless she really does give a damn about us after all."

  "Don't think of her." The crone patted his head. "Don't think of anything but the Combat. Your participation in the preliminaries should present no special hazard. And no one may challenge you in the manifestation of powers if I nominate you Second Farsensor. But once the High Mêlée begins you will need to muster all the bravery and cleverness and metapsychic power at your command. It's not enough for you simply to survive the fighting. You must show yourself an inspired leader and a destroyer of the Foe. Then, as the Combat draws to its climax, contingents from all the guilds may rally to follow your banner rather than that of Nodonn! Thus you will be seen as a valid kingly aspirant in the Heroic Encounters at the end. "

  Aiken said in a wistful little voice, "You sure I can't use iron?"

  Mayvar cackled. "Oh, you jester ... on the day when you become King of the Many-Colored Land you may do as you please. But never dream of using the blood-metal in this Combat. It would be said that you were allied to the Lowlives in the north. Why do you think I cautioned secrecy when I gave you the weapon to use against Delbaeth?"

  Aiken laced his fingers behind his head and rocked back and forth, contemplating limitless vistas.

  "When I'm king we'll change all kinds of rules. With a cohort of gold-torc humans armed with iron, we'll mop up the human rebels and take care of the Firvulag, too. But we won't slaughter 'em—hell, no! Now that the time-gate's closed, I'll have to scrounge up subjects anywhere I can. And look at all of the neat things the gnomies make! Fancy jewelry and chaliko tack and booze that's just stone faraway! Nope—I'll pacify the Little Folks by threatening 'em with the ultimate weapon and we'll have one big happy kingdom under Good King—"

  He stopped rocking. His black eyes widened and his mouth dropped in stunned surprise. "Oh, damn," he whispered. "Mayvar—can you hear it? It's mostly on the intimate human mode but enough slops over into the gray band for you to pick up if you spread it out and listen sharp. You grab? It's Stein."

  "Vengeance," Mayvar said. "He blames you. Incredible!"

  The golliwog youth sat stiffly on the edge of the amethyst throne, farsensing for all he was worth. "Still no firm conclusion. But mulling it over, the stupid ox ... How I promised to keep Sukey safe. But she wasn't kept safe. Ergo, my fault! Can you beat that for idiot logic? Sure as shit, that little broad is unconsciously leaking some part of the truth to him. Women! It'd be enough if she just hinted the miscarriage wasn't spontaneous. Looks to me like there's only one thought moving Stein—blame it on somebody besides himself."

  Mayvar said, "You did promise no harm would come to Sukey. The word of a gold-torc nobleman and royal aspirant—"

  "What about your precious rules?" he exploded. "Play by the rules, you said! Are you tellin' me now I should have gone against the King and Queen just to spare Sukey a little houghmagandy that shouldn't have done her or the kid any harm? If Stein wasn't such a thick-headed—"

  Mayvar had cocked her head, still farsensing. "Hear what his mind cries out! This is no joke, Aiken Drum."

  His tirade against her forgotten, Aiken focused again. The farspoken maunderings of the half-crazed Viking were mostly being broadcast through his torc on the uniquely human spectrum, and they were so chaotic that even human listeners would have been unlikely to expend the effort needed to decipher them. But if a person were patient and lifted aside the ramblings and mutters and the mixed-up business about Sukey—there was something else.

  The saboteurs coming to invade the torc factory, thinking they would receive Aiken's help with the Spear. Aiken's cosy arrangement with Gomnol.

  "Oh, Christ," breathed the trickster. "His mind-block's going. And with Gomnol dead, my puny redact isn't going to be able to nail the lid back down tight enough."

  "You must act at once. If Stein's thoughts are brought to the atten-tion of the Host, they will use him to prove you reprobate and unworthy of aspiring to the kingship. They will serve you as they did Gomnol."

  "God ... I'll have to get both Stein and Sukey out of here tonight—not wait till after I'm king, like I planned."

  "It is late for that course of action." She showed him what the safest course would be, at the same time trembling at her test of him.

  "I couldn't," he told her. "Not Stein and Sukey!"

  "Alive, they will always be a threat to your sovereignty."

  "No! There's gotta be another way!"
/>
  "You feel an obligation to them? Your honor? Your half-jesting promise? Your pride?"

  "Not them! Anybody else I'll zap to charcoal, but not them." Not the crazy dumb lovers see how they suffer because of one another shrunk/enlarged by the giving but what would it be like? Poor doomed damned saps wondered at but denied by the safe avoider as I avoid/deny you dying womanbodymind.

  He repeated, "Not them."

  Mayvar rose from the throne and swayed there hooded, looking like the calyx of some huge, unopened violet flower. He knew but could not see her fresh tears. "Blessed be my Making. I knew that you were not as Gomnol ... and there is another way."

  He bounded up and grabbed her by the arms. "What?"

  "Remain here and make ready for tomorrow. Trust me. I will see that your friends are sent out of Muriah tonight."

  2

  ON THIS COMBAT EVE, every true member of the ancient battle-company had thoughts only for the coming clash of Foes, the joint celebration of life and death that they believed was their reason for continuing existence in the Many-Colored Land. But there were a few who had rejected the ancient traditions, and these came together—even one who had not set foot in the capital city for five hundred years—to consider whether or not this year's Grand Combat might be the great turning point foreseen by Brede.

  To their exasperation, the Shipspouse herself would not attend the meeting, would not confirm or deny the possibility. "The Combat itself will manifest the Goddess's Will," she had told Dionket, "and then you will know what you must do." But the Lord Healer had not been satisfied with that. What did a mystic know of power struggles? Her vision was so disconcertingly long.

  And so he had summoned the leaders among the antibattle faction, even the pair long banished, to a secret chamber deep within the Mount of Heroes; and when Katlinel dared to bring in the two outsiders, the extraordinariness of the times excused it and even lent it a mad kind of suitability.

  DIONKET LORD HEALER: Greetings to you all, fellow traitors and peacelovers, and especially to our Psychokinetic Brother Minanonn Heretic, and our Coercive Brother Leyr, so long absent from our cabals, and our distinguished Foeman—