Egarn had spent daes worrying about the difficulty of finding a willing emissary, and he was astonished that this was happening so easily.
It was happening too easily. The scouts from Slorn were were superbly qualified as scouts—as spies and saboteurs in enemy territory. If courage and resourcefulness were the only necessary qualifications, they would be an ideal choice, but when he tried to visualize them in any twentieth century social situation, such as ordering food in a restaurant or doing research in a library reading room, he failed. They would look clumsily out-of-place wherever they went. Probably they would attract attention to themselves with every move they made—he could imagine them bumping into people, stumbling over things, spilling their drinks, dropping their forks, and destroying their mission out of sheer clumsiness.
He said slowly, “You will be exiles forever in a place that will be terrifyingly strange to you. You will have to face dangers of a kind you can’t even imagine.”
“One place is as good as another to us—or as bad,” Roszt said. “We no longer have homes anyway. As for the dangers, we have no fear at all of death—only of a wasted death. We welcome a cause to die for.”
Kaynor added, “When we first heard you talk about saving humanity by destroying it, we thought it was some silliness brought on by your fever. Now we understand, and we want to help you.”
“If your plan doesn’t work, humanity is going to destroy itself anyway and leave nothing,” Roszt said.
That was Egarn’s thought exactly, but he had wanted an emissary who would appear completely ordinary in every respect; one who would never stand out in a crowd—who could carry out the mission almost unnoticed.
But perhaps it was a job for scouts—for what would they be when they reached the twentieth century but saboteurs in enemy territory? Perhaps courage and resourcefulness were more important than a commonplace appearance. “Very well,” Egarn said. “If you are able to learn what you have to know, you can go together.”
“We will find this Johnson,” Roszt said, “but it won’t be enough to destroy his len. As soon as we left him, he would make another.”
Kaynor nodded. “That is obvious. We will have to kill him.”
5. THE PEER OF LANT
The Med of Lant was missing.
The rumor spread through the court like one of the preposterous diseases the old man was so fond of warning peeragers about, carrying with it a rash of unlikely symptoms—fits of temper, seizures of indigestion, irritating itches, swollen gums, even a plague of hangnails. These maladies in combination dampened an entire tenite of the traditional Plao Fest and forced the cancellation of several hunts.
The disorders were much talked about, symptoms were compared, elixirs were exchanged. No one mentioned the Med of Lant aloud. No one dared to—and yet the rumor spread, and spread.
One-name servers and servants, always inexhaustible sources of court gossip, turned inexplicably reticent when asked about the Med. No one-namer in the entire court complex would admit to knowing anything at all, not even that the old man was missing. Court officials watched the peer for a sign. There could be no public comment on the Med’s absence until she herself officially acknowledged it and indicated the attitude she favored.
The Peer of Lant said nothing. She acted as though totally oblivious of the old man’s existence. When she passed the vanished Med’s quarters and workroom on her morning ride, she seemed not to notice the guard placed there. She even attempted to keep secret the far-ranging search she was conducting, but in that she failed spectacularly. The whispered rumors that seeped through the court carried descriptions of the rage with which she received her harassed officers’ reports of failure.
The routine work of the Med’s office suffered no disruption. His servers were highly competent, and—since he had devoted much of his time to private matters—they certainly didn’t need him to tell them what to do. Even so, it was remarkable for the peer to leave a high office vacant, and with each passing dae, uneasiness and uncertainly increased among the med servers and those with tasks linked to theirs.
“All this fuss about someone I don’t even know!” a pouting peerling, a younger daughter of the nobility, complained guardedly when told that yet another hunt had been cancelled. Peerists and peerlings, the younger aristocrats, were only vaguely aware of the Med’s existence. He had hovered dimly in the court’s background, a slightly comical, shadowy figure who preferred fussing in his dusty workroom to taking part in the richly varied cycle of fests and hunts. Some had never seen him at all. It was said that early each morning he walked in his garden, where strange and unpalatable fruits and vegetables like plums and strawberries and tomatoes were cultivated, but even if the garden had not been enclosed, no peerager would have been up at that hour to catch a glimpse of him.
Older peeragers could remember a time when he was very much a part of the court scene—an advisor, even a confident of the peer. Elderly peeragers his own age, of whom very few survived, could have told a great deal more about him, but they wisely made a virtue of their failing memories and said nothing.
Only in the peerdom’s one-name villages was the Med’s disappearance discussed openly. One-namers who lived away from the court did not have to rely on rumors for their information. Forest workers had seen the growing army of searchers beating the undergrowth. One-namers whose duties required travel had been harassed by road patrols and questioned at frequent watchposts. Outlying work camps had been searched. The Lantiff turned out every resident of one small village and tore their dwellings apart. Accounts of these experiences were passed from village to village until one-namers from one end of Lant to the other were watching and waiting apprehensively and sifting every scrap of news for portents of catastrophies to come, and their forebodings crossed the borders to one-namers of the conquered peerdoms.
Egarn’s predecessor in office, still referred to as the Old Med, had been a legend in his own time, an awesome figure venerated by all, a sorcerer who dealt with forces of darkness better left unmentioned. By comparison, Egarn—a one-namer, a commoner in a high office that tradition reserved for peeragers— had been a nonentity, and few had been aware of his power and influence. Elderly one-namers remembered him as a kindly man willing to speak out against an injustice when no one else dared. Elderly peeragers considered him an aberration because he worked hard. Not only had he accepted the responsibilities of his office, but he actually attempted to carry them out. A peerager would have considered it a solemn obligation to perform as little work as possible.
Egarn had concerned himself with everyone’s health, even that of the no-namers, and he made the peerdom a far healthier place by emphasizing the need for sanitation, for pure water, for carefully prepared food, for skillful nursing of the sick, and for the isolation of those with certain kinds of diseases. He held the respect of all of his contemporaries, including the peer, because he avoided court intrigue and disdained the sordid maneuvering for personal advantage that was the foremost concern of peeragers and their one-name high servers.
Now he was missing, and even those who thought they knew him well were discovering how little was known about him. He was a man of mystery in a land and an age where there should have been no mystery about anyone, and the peer’s incomprehensible conduct underscored his strangeness. Every member of her court savored the latest rumors and watched alertly to see what she would say and do.
She said and did nothing.
The Peer of Lant had attained the age of sixty-five in robust good health, and she fully expected to enjoy a remarkable longevity. She attributed this good fortune to her austere habits, and—conveniently forgetting the multifold indulgences of her youth—she was constantly taxing her fellow peeragers with their excesses.
Food, drink, fests, hunts, and love affairs circumscribed the peerager’s life, not only in Lant, but in every peerdom she was familiar with. She was determined to do something about that—not with her surviving contemporaries or their children,
whom she scornfully considered beyond redemption, but with their children’s children. She redeemed those young peerlings and peerists whenever she could, snatching them out of their indolence and working them hard, especially at military command and organization, and they responded creditably. Already some were performing well in responsible positions.
The Peer of Lant meant to conquer the known world. One of her uncles had been fond of ancient military legends, and he retold these tales to her when she was a child. They fired her imagination and engendered a vision that never left her of warriors, and conquest, and the purification of a decadent human race by battle. She spent much of her youth playing at war games with troops recruited from among the children of servants, and she had followed her vision steadfastly throughout her life with very few deviations.
One of those deviations had been Egarn. She vividly remembered the day the Old Med her uncle brought him to court for the first time. She had been fourteen or fifteen—beautiful, she thought, and flushed with triumph from a mock battle in which her youthful warriors had soundly outmaneuvered a similar troop blunderingly led by a male cousin.
She came dashing along on her horse followed by an elite mounted escort of hulking lashers she had chosen herself for their ferocity in practice duels. Her uncle was approaching the palace from his workroom accompanied by the strangest-looking male she had ever seen. He was tall in stature but, compared with her lashers, preposterously slender. His hair was cut short enough to look silly, but it was the purest, most glimmering blond hair she had ever seen. Despite his outlandish clothing, he seemed handsome to her. She dismounted, as did her escort. Her uncle knelt; Egarn, who had been walking a pace ahead of him, failed to notice. He strolled past her, the Prince of Lant, as though she didn’t exist and without a hint of obeisance.
Any spirited prince would have reacted as she did. She used her whip on him. What followed was in every way astonishing. Egarn, speaking words that were incomprehensible to her, turned and with unbelievable quickness calmly caught her wrist, twisted it, took the whip from her, and tossed it aside. Her escort sprang forward to avenge this treasonable insult, and she, with becoming fury, signaled she wanted the miscreant dead. Moments later, all five members of her escort were trying to pick themselves up from the ground. Two had broken limbs and did not succeed. The other three abandoned their intention of tearing Egarn apart with their bare hands. They drew their swords. He stood waiting calmly for their next move. That was when the peer her mother arrived and demanded an explanation for this mayhem that was disturbing the peace of her court.
The Old Med presented the stranger to peer and prince as his personal guest. He was called Egarn—his real name was difficult to say, so the med had given him one of his own names to use—and he was a traveler from a far place. He had special knowledge and skills of great value that were unknown in the Peerdom of Lant. The Old Med hoped to persuade him to remain as his assistant. Unfortunately, Egarn hadn’t yet learned their customs, and therefore he didn’t know that everyone in Lant was required to kneel to prince and peer.
The Old Med then turned to Egarn and explained, speaking slowly and with simple words, that a single knee must touch the ground in greeting the prince, after which the subject could rise but with eyes downcast unless spoken to. Both knees must touch the ground in greeting the peer, and the subject was not permitted to rise until the peer had passed by unless the peer granted permission. The Old Med demonstrated.
Egarn watched and listened with obvious indignation. When the Old Med finished, he turned his gaze on the prince. She had never experienced one like it. It expressed contempt as well as a fierce desire to retrieve her whip and use it on her. No other inhabitant of Lant or any other peerdom would have dared to look at a prince in that fashion.
Egarn announced proudly, “An American Citizen kneels to no one,” and there was no mistaking his meaning even if the words were incomprehensible.
Since kneeling was contrary to the practices of the stranger’s own land, the peer ruled him exempt until he’d had time to familiarize himself with the customs of Lant and decide whether he wished to remain there.
He never did kneel. He contented himself with bending forward slightly at the waist. The peer her mother, who developed a liking for him, was content with that; the prince was not. For an entire sike she venomously plotted his death. Then it suddenly occurred to her that Egarn was by far the bravest person she had ever met, and she idolized bravery. Five oversized lashers had assaulted him simultaneously, and he met them without a flicker of fear and casually tossed one after another to the ground. When three of them came at him with drawn swords—himself unarmed—he had faced them just as calmly. His was a different sort of bravery, a bravery of skill and courage rather than the brutal force with which lashers met danger and dealt out death. Once she understood that, she fell madly in love with him and made him her first consort.
In Lant, it was unheard of for a peerager to openly mate with a one-namer. Even a willful prince such as herself wouldn’t have dared to do so if he hadn’t been a stranger. When several of her uncles objected, she told them what Egarn himself had said—in his own land, no one held a rank that was higher than his—and they had to be content with that.
Egarn was the father of her first child, a beautiful, gentle daughter who looked remarkably like him. Fortunately for the Peerdom of Lant, the girl died young. With her shy inwardness, she would have made a deplorable prince and peer, but she was a lovely child. Even when the prince tired of Egarn’s quiet ways and found other consorts, for many, many years—in fact, until she began her wars of conquest—they had remained friends, and when she needed advice, she had gone to him without hesitation and with the certainty that he would speak honestly and unselfishly. She appointed him Med of Lant when the Old Med her uncle died, and she had never regretted it.
She did not regret it now. Not only had he made Lant a healthier place for everyone, but none of her military conquests would have been possible without him.
The lashers of Lant, who guarded and supervised the no-namers and filled the ranks of the peer’s armies, were a race apart—a squat, muscular people possessed of a fearless recklessness that could, with proper training, make them invincible warriors. She saw that even when she was young. As soon as she became peer, she began organizing and training her Lantiff, elite troops of lasher horsemen whose frenzied charges, flashing, curved swords, and vicious lances were calculated to inflict terror on their opponents. She tested her ideas with occasional raids into neighboring peerdoms, and the results were gratifying.
Unfortunately, she miscalculated. She alarmed her neighbors before she was ready for war, and they responded by developing armies of their own. Worse, as the army of Lant became stronger and its incursions more frequent, the neighboring peerdoms began to band together for mutual assistance against the marauding Lantiff. Over the years a stand-off developed, but the Peerdom of Lant was badly outnumbered, and that disparity increased yearly. Finally the neighboring peers decided to put an end to Lant’s perpetual belligerency. A combined invasion was planned; Lant was to be partitioned amongst its neighbors and its peeragers exterminated.
In deep despair, the peer turned to Egarn. He promised to devise a weapon that would protect the peerdom against any combination of enemies, and he had done so, to her delight and astonishment. The amount of destruction a mere handful of trained Lantiff could do with the strange tubes Egarn fashioned strained the powers of belief. Suddenly she possessed a force powerful beyond her wildest imaginings.
The lesson of a near defeat had taught her to plan her moves with care. She launched a lightning campaign, triumphantly concluded before her enemies could react in concert, and toppled the first of her neighbors. Before she she struck again, she paused long enough to assimilate the conquered army into her own, fortify her new borders, and set up an administration that could exploit the subjected territory’s war potential.
She had conquered all her northern and e
astern neighbors, began a long-planned southern invasion, and was turning her thoughts beyond the western mountains to the Ten Peerdoms when Egarn committed his appalling treachery. He came to her with a tale about renewing the weapons. She had believed him. Why not? She knew med servers had to replace their lens from time to time. Further, Egarn had given the weapons to her freely as a gift and asked nothing for himself. He never asked anything for himself except the freedom to pursue his studies.
Then he informed her he had destroyed the weapons—every one of them, he said—and he refused to make more. When she inflicted privations on him and threatened torture, he killed his guards with a weapon he somehow had kept hidden and escaped.
She had thought him the most selfless, the most totally loyal individual in her peerdom. When he turned against her, she discovered she hadn’t known him at all. In her fury she taxed him with treason, and he answered, “I have repaid my indebtedness to Lant and to you many times over. I have kept your peerdom healthy through both of our lifetimes, and I gave you weapons to defend it against invaders. When you used those weapons for conquest, you also used them against me.”
Now he had vanished utterly. So had the Lantiff sent to capture him, along with their dogs and horses, leaving her wondering uneasily about other miraculous weapons he might have.
She was consumed by apprehension that he might escape over the mountains and bestow his weapons, his knowledge, and his counsel—she well knew the value of all three—on the decadent rulers of the Ten Peerdoms. She took the only course open to her. She hurriedly concentrated her Lantiff, blocked all routes to the west, and began a massive search.
Then a totally unexpected report arrived out of the south. She refused to believe it, but she sent Com Gerna, the young commander of her guard, to investigate. He returned after eight daez of frenzied riding and silently offered her a shabby bundle. The peer opened it with her own hands.
The Chronocide Mission Page 6