The Golden Torc

by Julian May

  Mayvar Kingmaker came out of the crowd with Aiken's own purple-glass sword and presented it to him. He cut off the head of Pallol with a single swipe and held it up. The once-potent Eye was shuttered. In the other socket something silvery glittered in a mass of bloody tissue. Delicately, Aiken plucked the fatal missile out. He zapped it with his creative faculty so that the late Lord Gomnol's cigar cutter was as shiny and clean as ever and the long vision of the farsensors in the crowd could read what was stamped on the metal:

  SOLINGEN—INOX STEEL

  ***

  "Here's to the new era," said Aiken Drum. "Long live Me."

  Six hundred kilometers to the southwest of Muriah, the long natural dam that stretched between Spain and Africa was finally starting to give way—not in one spot but in a hundred, all along its waterlogged and crumbling length. Stressed unbearably by the weight of the ever-deepening water, great slices of the ash and scoria barrier went sliding forward down the eastern slope. As the impounded sea gushed over, the breaks grew and merged with one another until it seemed that the entire unstable dike would be shoved into the estuary of the Southern Lagoon by the pent-up pressure.

  Saltwater crashed among dark lava buttes in the desolate country east of the vanished Long Fjord. It flooded across moonlit flats, found new drainage channels among gypsum dunes and spindly towers of striped evaporite. The ground trembled and the air was filled with a stupendous roar as nearly 200 kilometers of dike-length subsided within fifteen minutes.

  The volume of rushing water was too vast for the narrow estuary of the Southern Lagoon to accommodate and the flood rose higher and higher in the phenomenon called hydraulic damming. Ahead of the catastrophic surge flew a hurricane blast of air. The pale waters of the long lagoon seemed to recede in horror before the onrushing dark wall, then surrender, rise to meet it, and merge at its nearly vertical face. The wave was 230 meters high.

  Freed of their last restraint, the waters of the Western Ocean raced toward the White Silver Plain.

  ***

  The throng of Tanu and humankind sang the Song while all of the knights held high their glowing jeweled swords. Beneath the waving white banner with its golden face stood Thagdal and Nontusvel, and behind them, seeming to generate her own shadow in spite of the multihued dazzle, was Brede. The Tanu Great Ones were also there; but of the Foe, only King Yeochee and the noncombatant Firvulag nobility stood waiting for the latest and most disappointing in a long-unbroken string of similar humiliations. The Firvulag champions, and many Little People among the spectators as well, had withdrawn—too overcome by sorrow even to stay for the rare spectacle that was soon to follow.

  Aiken Drum plucked Pallol's standard from the ground. With a psychocreative flourish he removed the demon-otter effigy that had been mounted amid the dyed scalp locks and dangling chains of skulls. Displaying the head of the fallen Battlemaster to the crowd one final time, Aiken made a magician's pass. Pallol's head was transformed into a golden death mask; in the socket of the left eye was a star ruby the size of a grapefruit. When the head was impaled upon its own battle standard, Aiken Drum raised it high and approached King Thagdal.

  Before he could speak, a gaunt figure in purple robes came from the ranks of Great Ones and stood beside him.

  The Marshal of Sport, already flustered by the outrageousness of the whole affair, seemed to choke on his stately announcement.

  "Awful King—and Father! The referees and—and judges of the Tanu and Firvulag races have—conferred and made their last accounting. And—uh—the victory belongs to the noble and valorous Tanu battle-company of the Many-Colored Land!" After a pause for cheering, he resumed. "Here before you, craving your royal accolade as Premier Champion of this Grand Combat, stands Lord Aiken Drum—"

  "No," said Mayvar quietly.

  There was a breathless hush.

  "No longer Aiken Drum," she said, "for now I bestow upon him at last his Tanu name—that taken by every human admitted to our battle-company and fellowship. I have kept Aiken Drum's true name hidden in my heart for so long because I wished to let him show you himself that he is worthy of it. I, Mayvar Kingmaker, have never had doubts of him. And on this field of battle he has proved that he is truly one beloved of the Goddess ... Therefore, with confidence and love I call him! He is the Shining One! He is the Young Lugonn."

  The crowd, stunned first by incredulity, began an uproarious clamor of voices and minds, horns and beaten shields. There were those who rejoiced and those who shouted enraged exception; but the tumult was so vast that no one could say where the hearts of the majority lay—with the young Battlemaster or with the old.

  Thagdal stepped forward, his face stiff as that emblazoned on his royal banner. He accepted the Firvulag standard from the hands of the little golden man and passed it immediately to Bunone War-teacher. Eadone, Dean of Guilds, now came to the fore bearing something upon a long velvet pillow. The crowd noise ceased. This was the moment they had been waiting for. Would Aiken Drum—Lugonn—pick up the holy Sword of Sharn and pass it in fealty to the Thagdal, as Nodonn always had done? Or would he—

  The shining small figure lifted the huge thing, leaving the tethered powerpack on the pillow that Eadone still held. Taking the hilt in both hands, he pointed the Sword blade-down and drove it into the salt at the feet of the King, then turned his back on Thagdal.

  There was a slow letting-out of breath. The throng seemed stupefied, as did all of the royalty, both Tanu and Firvulag, gathered beneath the emblems of the two Kings.

  Into this void stepped the dark personage who had guided both races for a thousand years. Her garments of scarlet and black repeated the colors of the sky, for it was nearly dawn. Her face, clearly visible, was wet with tears.

  "Let it be, then," her mind and voice spoke together, "as I have foreseen. Let the two heroes contend with Sword and Spear on the White Silver Plain in the last Combat."

  Mayvar led out the four Tanu champions who had declared for the Shining One in the Heroic Encounters. They carried with them the Spear. Bleyn fastened the jeweled baldric holding the powerpack around the little human's shoulder and hip. Nodonn materialized out of thin air and stood next to the Sword. He pulled it from the ground and held it high while Kuhal, Imidol, Culluket, and Celadeyr girded him in the harness.

  The throng drew far back. Impelled by some psychokinetic force, the heroic pair separated, gliding a few centimeters above the salt, which now had assumed a dull-red luminescence in the overcast dawn. Visible haloes of defensive mental energy englobed the tall rosy-gold apparition and the diminutive form of the trickster. Both stood ready.

  "Begin," said the Shipspouse.

  There were twin bursts of emerald fire and simultaneous concussions that forced all of the forced spectators to shield their senses for an instant. When the audience recovered, the thunder still reverberated over the Plain. Both contestants stood firm, psychic barriers and glowing armor intact.

  Again came the green explosions and the monstrous clap of sound—but this time the echoes did not dwindle. The deep rumbling became louder and the ground shook under the heroes' feet. A wind rose out of nowhere, adding its howl to the deeper note. The red-and-black sky suddenly was obliterated all along the western horizon.

  Thagdal the King saw the wave and cried the first mental warning. Summoning every erg of his metapsychic power, he erected a wall. "To me! To me, all of you!"

  They joined him—Firvulag and Tanu and torced human—in a massed mind-thrust never before attempted in Exile. Nodonn lent his psychokinetic strength, and Lugonn, and all of the Little People strove with their creativity to shore up the King's mental bastion that held back the onrushing sea, to prevent it from breaking over them all. But the dark water mounted higher, higher, and the weight of it pressing their defending minds was unimaginable millions of tons...

  The wave broke.

  "I am still King," Thagdal told Nontusvel. The sea crashed upon them. Drowning, he was content, and he sent the last of his dwindli
ng force in a touch of comfort to the Queen, for he had not let go of her hand.

  ***

  The primary wave-front rushed on into the sunrise, losing height rapidly as it spread into the expanse of the Great Lagoon. A secondary surge washed the shoulder of the Aven Peninsula, flooding inland for several kilometers before draining away down the cliffs. The waters caught those still remaining in the city by surprise, and most of them perished, including all but a handful of the ramapithecine slaves.

  Amerie would have rushed out of the room high on the Mount of Heroes, except that Chief Burke seized her and held her tight, and she fought him and screamed until she was exhausted and could weep no longer. And then Basil came and crouched there with them under the terrible window. Both Amerie and the rugged old lawyer understood when the former don whispered his ancient prayer.

  "Elevaverunt flumina fluctus suos, a vocibus aquarum multarum. Mirabilis elationes maris. Mirabilis in altis Dominus."

  Together, they waited for Elizabeth.

  12

  THE MIND-CRIES as they passed!

  They reached Elizabeth even within the cocoon of fire. The first scattered leavetakings at the start of the Mêlée came like tentative drops introducing a storm; and then whole gusts of them went flying by in increasing numbers—crying out, afraid and disappointed and raging and eager. There were lulls. And then the death gales rising again, rushing past her refuge. All those disembodied minds hurrying beyond space and time to the many-in-All that she had shut out, and a very few spinning their own fiery cocoons to drift apart from the stream, denying, going their own lost way.

  But she was not free to follow the river of Mind. She was anchored yet to Earth. When the final disjunctive cataclysm happened, she felt the shock even within the hiding place, and had to let her mind's eye observe. Too amazed to grieve, she watched and heard the torrent passing.

  Many of them were persons she knew. And at the end of the great storm-surge of mortality there came one that was all too familiar. Brede's mind swept by her with a final appealing touch. And then Elizabeth saw an alien thing, vast and bright and loving, come to meet its mate, an escort into irresistible light...

  Elizabeth awoke.

  The face leaning over her belonged to Sister Amerie, and it had the drawn, haunted expression that comes after there are no tears left.

  "I know," said Elizabeth.

  The nun extended her hand, touched Elizabeth's tightly clenched fingers. "There was—an exotic woman. She knew this would happen. She healed us. Brought us here to you. And there was a message: 'Tell Elizabeth that now she is free to make a true choice.' I hope you understand."

  Elizabeth sat up. After a moment she was able to rise from the cot and walk to the window in the natural bunker where Basil and Chief Burke stood, now unable to take their eyes from the scene below the mountain.

  Morning had broken fully and the heavily clouded sky gave a gray and pitiful light. The White Silver Plain and both tent-cities and the entire expanse of carved and sparkling sediments that had once rimmed Muriah from its cliffs to the lagoon shores had vanished. In its place was a sea. It was the color of dull jade and its white-capped waves ran eastward toward the far horizon. Driven by the strong wind, breakers crashed over the small curving point of land at the peninsula's end where Brede's house had been. Muriah was now beyond reach of the waves; however, smashed houses and trees and pools of draining water showed where the earlier surge had devastated most of the capital city.

  Now you are free to make a true choice.

  Outside the door of their room was noise. Her mind perceived the anguished jumble of thoughts. It was hard—well-nigh impossible, given the unbearable emotional load of them—to distinguish Tanu from human, or these from the Firvulag who were apparently gathered among them. There were no masters and slaves, no friends or Foes; there were only survivors.

  "I think we should go out now," Chief Burke said.

  Elizabeth nodded. The four of them turned away from the window and walked to the door. Burke lifted the latch.

  Now you are free to make a true choice.

  There stood Dionket and Creyn and others wearing the garb of redactors. Behind them milled numbers of the survivors. Elizabeth gently fended their minds, met the eyes of the two healers.

  "Give me just a few minutes." She gestured to the red balloon jumpsuit she still wore. "I'd like to find some other clothes."

  ***

  Torn from its base, the huge glass box that was the Great Retort wallowed in the flood, the bodies inside of it tumbling and piling with each violent oscillation. Eventually the Retort settled on a fairly even keel. Half of its bulk was below the waterline and the conscious ones among the prisoners felt they were adrift in some bizarre parody of a glass-bottomed boat. The black and silver awning that had roofed it was all tattered and it snapped as the gale took hold of the ornamental superstructure. The benches and tables, the commodes and food dishes and water jars were all flung together with the bodies of the condemned.

  Raimo Hakkinen spat out saltwater, salt blood, and a tooth. He lay up against the front wall, close to the door. Water was leaking in through crevices around the jamb.

  "Come on," he croaked, stripping off his undershirt and ripping strips from it with his teeth.

  Only one person from the pile of casualties nearest him responded, a woman dressed in a suit of armor-padding. They bit and torc apart her short gambeson; the collapsed plass bubbles made excellent caulking.

  "That ought to hold her," Raimo said, offering a gap-toothed smile.

  "She floats!" The woman stared in a dazed fashion at the brownish water, swirling with unimaginable debris, that surrounded them outside the four transparent walls. "Just like some crazy aquarium—except—those things on the outside aren't fish—" She turned away and was violently sick. Raimo backed off on hands and knees.

  "Maybe I can find a water jar that didn't break."

  He went creeping among the bodies and the mess. Quite a few people were alive, but there were plenty of deaders, too. He located a container of water snuggled amid three corpses. And wasn't that one over there—

  He turned the body over. "Bryan? You all right?" The lips smiled. "Bryan?"

  "He cannot hear you," said the voice of Aluteyn Craftsmaster. "Your friend has passed into Tana's peace."

  Raimo shrank back, holding the water bottle. "Uh—too bad. We came down to Muriah on the same boat together. And if the rumors I heard about him and Lady Rosmar were true, maybe the two of us—well, sorta suffered the same way."

  Aluteyn gently unfastened Bryan's golden torc. "Not quite the same way, Raimo. But neither of you has to suffer any more." He put the torc around Raimo's neck, removing the silver one he had been wearing. "I think Bryan would have wanted you to have this. Your brain is mending, thanks to my little patch job, and we may find more skilled redactors among our fellow survivors. Or—later."

  "You think we'll make it? You think this damn glass box'll float long enough to take us to shore?"

  "Those who programmed restraints on my metafunctions are doing so no more. I can generate a moderate PK wind, even keep out the sea by reinforcing the walls of the Retort, now that I have recovered my full consciousness." He gestured to the sprawled bodies. "If you will help me to sort out the ones who still live—"

  "Let me go get the dame who was helping me to caulk the door." Raimo grinned and tottered off. The floor of the Retort lurched in the fierce currents, setting the bodies to rolling.

  The Craftsmaster gave one last look at the smiling face of the dead anthropologist. Then, groaning with pain and resignation, he began to work again.

  ***

  She was a strong swimmer and a woman of courage. Using her fatigued creativity, she could still fashion twin bubbles from a portion of her court dress and position them behind her arms so they would help to buoy her up. And when the sun came out at last to shine on the swirling muddy waters and she began to faint from weariness and shock, Mercy called ou
t:

  "My Lord! Where are you, Nodonn?"

  No answering thought came. It was hard, almost impossible, to muster the control needed for long-range farspeaking. She was so deadly tired! But finally she gathered the strength and called again. "Nodonn! Nodonn!"

  O come daemon lover, angel of light, come. How can you be dead and I not?

  She floated in the midst of the flood. Faint thoughts, faraway and garbled, made a vertiginous twitter in her brain. None of them were his thoughts.

  "Nodonn," she kept whispering. And once, "Bryan."

  Her head flung back, hair trailing like tendrils of dark seaweed, Mercy drifted in the sea. Finally the sun went down and it was cold. Her legs and lower body numbed. She suffered from thirst, but she was so weakened from shock that she could separate the sweet water molecules from the salt with only the greatest effort. Creativity, of all the metafunctions, is most vulnerable to trauma and sorrow.

  "Then I will die along with his world," she decided, "for it's all gone now, all the brightness and the wonder and the song."

  A small yellow light.

  It bobbed, flickered, grew. She decided to wait, since the radiant entity gave evidence of having farseen her, even though it stayed coyly beyond her own mental sight. After an hour or so the glowing thing drew close by. She saw it was the Kral—that great golden cauldron sacred to the Creator Guild—and she cried out.

  "Creative Brother! Do you know if Nodonn lives?"

  "Is that gratitude?" asked Aiken Drum.

  He leaned over the rim of the kettle, extended an arm all covered in golden pockets, and painfully lifted her up. She was deposited in a heap on the curved metal beside him and he grinned down at her.