by Julian May
At the September Sport Meeting in Muriah, both Aiken and Stein were required to display their fighting prowess in the arena, before the grand and petty nobility of the Many-Colored Land. If the pair passed muster, they would be accepted as members of the Tanu battle-company and the Delbaeth Quest would proceed.
Stein fought first and dispatched a monstrous hyenalike animal with his battleaxe. Then it was Aiken’s turn. His antagonist was a species of crocodile seventeen meters long. It had been brought to the Muriah arena just for him by Nodonn Battlemaster, who had recognized Aiken as a force to be reckoned with.
The anthropologist Bryan Grenfell had been spending his days studying Tanu culture in company with a genial hybrid, Ogmol. On the night of Aiken’s testing, Bryan was in the royal box together with the King and Queen, Aluteyn Craftsmaster, the President of the Creator Guild; the fey human Genetics Master Greg-Donnet (né Gregory Prentice Brown); and other notables. Bryan was introduced to Nodonn upon the Battlemaster’s arrival, but he had eyes only for Nodonn’s new wife, Lady Rosmar—who was none other than the bewitching Mercy Lamballe, Bryan’s own love-at-first-sight, whom he had helplessly followed to the Pliocene. Mercy now wore a golden torc and had developed tremendous psychocreative powers.
In the arena, Aiken met the giant crocodile. Astride a chaliko, wearing golden glass armor and armed only with a glass lance, the trickster was terrified. He lost control of his mount and was thrown to the sand. The rules permitted no use of overt mental power against the beast, but Aiken eventually conquered it, using only his native cunning. The Tanu spectators went wild at his bold performance. King Thagdal and Nodonn had a more chilly response.
Having proved themselves, Aiken and Stein now undertook the Delbaeth Quest. The expedition consisted of several hundred knights and was led by the King himself. Nodonn was there to keep an eye on Aiken. Two High Table members, Tanu-human hybrids of great mental power, became partisans of the trickster. They were Alberonn Mindealer and Bleyn the Champion.
The colorful troop began the Quest at the large city of Afaliah, at the base of the Aven Peninsula. Its crusty old lord, Celadeyr, no particular friend of the Host, was nevertheless scornful of the notion that a human such as Aiken might get the better of the awful Delbaeth. For three weeks the Quest chased the monster, who bombarded the knights with lethal fireballs and effectively kept them at a distance. Finally the Firvulag disappeared into a vast network of caverns out on the Gibraltar Isthmus, and King Thagdal and Nodonn demanded that Aiken admit he was beaten.
Aiken refused. He and Stein stripped themselves of their glass armor and prepared to follow Delbaeth underground. By law, the Quest had to end in three days, when the Grand Combat Truce would begin and Tanu and Firvulag would forswear fighting until the start of the ritual war. Aiken demanded that he be allowed those three days; and supported by his partisans, he was given his chance. Using his psychocreative power, Aiken turned himself and Stein into bats and they flew into the depths.
They encountered Delbaeth two days later and killed him by means of the secret device Mayvar had given Aiken. Just before they left the Firvulag’s cave. Stein pointed out to Aiken that the waters of the Atlantic were pounding against the western wall. The narrow Gibraltar Isthmus, forming a sill between Spain and Africa, was all that separated the ocean from the deep empty basin of the Mediterranean.
With the start of the month-long Truce, both Tanu and Firvulag from all parts of the Many-Colored Land began to converge on Muriah’s White Silver Plain, a large salt flat where tent cities, grandstands, lists, and the battlefield for the Combat proper were located. Because they had adopted war-mounts and other human innovations, the Tanu had won the Grand Combat for forty years running, and the Firvulag had become more and more bitter. However, the recent fall of Finiah cheered the Little People—and inspired them to adopt a few Lowlife fighting customs themselves in hopes of changing their luck. The new tactics were opposed by the old Firvulag Battlemaster, Paliol One-Eye; but he was forced to bow to the will of the younger generals Sharn and Ayfa, a husband-and-wife team.
In the Lowlife village of Hidden Springs, Madame Guderian discussed her plan for liberating humanity from the Tanu yoke. Phase One had been successful. Finiah with its barium mine was a deserted ruin.
Phase Two would be more audacious. Under cover of the Truce, a small group of Lowlives would infiltrate the torc factory down in Muriah and sabotage the irreplaceable machinery. The undertaking would be hazardous in the extreme, since the factory was situated inside the fortresslike Coercer Guild complex, presided over by the renegade human. Lord Gomnol.
Phase Three involved the permanent closing of the time-gate. Madame had a plan for doing this herself, and Claude insisted upon helping her.
An implied fourth phase of the liberation involved the making of iron weapons by humanity. It was arranged that the freed human population of Finiah, as well as some of the Lowlives who had come from other parts of Europe to join in the Finiah fight, would found several Iron Villages. They would mine,smelt, and forge the “blood metal” in preparation for the ultimate bid for human freedom.
Eleven people, including Madame and the Group Green survivors, left Hidden Springs to implement Phases Two and Three. They were disguised as loyalist human refugees from Finiah. At the city of Romiah, Madame and Claude separated from the others and went off to hide near Castle Gateway, while the others proceeded south to the capital. The two groups would try to synchronize strikes against the time-gale and torc factory.
The Muriah-bound group included Felice, Sister Amerie, Chief Burke, the alpinist don Basil Wimbome (liberated from a Finiah prison), and five other dedicated Lowlives. Felice’s metapsychic powers were developing nicely and the longer she wore her golden torc, the stronger her mental faculties became. She also carried the photonic Spear. It had been totally discharged in the Finiah fight, but the saboteurs hoped that their former Group Green companion, Aiken Drum, would find some way of putting it back into action. As the group approached the Tanu capital, a telepathic call was sent to Aiken, telling him of the Lowlife conspiracy. The saboteurs took for granted that Aiken would be loyal to humanity and eager to assist them. But they were wrong.
Down in Muriah, Aiken and Stein and Elizabeth learned at the same lime of the impending assaults on the torc works and the time-gate. Elizabeth had reluctantly helped Brede attain metapsychic operancy; but she was still determined to escape from Muriah in her red balloon and live alone. Stein eagerly welcomed the prospect of a strike against the Tanu; but Aiken feared that the exotics would read Stein’s simple mind and discover the plot, and so he and his new ally Gomnol (who professed to be sympathetic to humanity) put a mind-block into the big Viking. Neither Gomnol nor Aiken anticipated that Stein would leak the sabotage plot to his redactor wife, Sukey.
The alliance between Aiken and Gomnol Lord Coercer was a devious one. Neither man really trusted the other, but they had been forced into a coalition of necessity. Aiken aspired to be King of the Many-Colored Land and would need plenty of help to fulfill his ambition. Gomnol, cordially hated by the present heir to the throne, Nodonn, knew that his previous position of strength as a supporter of King Thagdal was crumbling. The Tanu monarch was on a downhill slide and might very well take Gomnol with him.
The King had believed that the Tanu race benefited by the admixture of human genes and the utilization of human technology. But now Bryan Grenfelell’s cultural survey, recently completed but still secret, showed that humans would eventually dominate the Many-Colored Land if Thagdal’s policy continued. The King suspected (correctly) that his eldest son Nodonn planned to use the survey to discredit him publicly during the Grand Combat. Additionally, the King had suffered another blow to his prestige when Brede forbade the implementation of Gomnol’s mating scheme between Thagdal and Elizabeth. Elizabeth was now taboo, and the King would not become the father of an operant super race as he had hoped. On the contrary, that honor might very likely fall to Aiken Drum!
Sunk in despair, Thagdal confided his fears to Queen Nontusvel, who knew just what kind of diversion would cheer her spouse. By royal command, she demanded that Sukey be given to the King. Dionket was forced to yield the young woman up. As Thagdal took his pleasure, Sukey let slip a vengeful thought about the northern saboteurs soon to invade Muriah. The Queen overheard this thought and notified Nodonn’s brother Culluket the Interrogator, a sinister and powerful member of the Host faction. Culluket wrung from Sukey all that Stein had inadvertently told her of the plot, with the result that Stein and Sukey were both condemned and thrown into prison to await death at the Combat’s finale.
Aiken, even though he was known to be Stem’s close friend, managed to convince Culluket that he knew nothing of the plot. But the Host continued to believe that both Aiken and Gomnol were in league with the Lowlife conspirators.
Meanwhile, the party of saboteurs had reached Muriah and were ready to strike. They called Aiken to their hiding place and rather reluctantly turned the inoperative Spear over to him. He promised to attempt to recharge it, but really had no intention of giving it back to the saboteurs. It was to be a key element in his own schemes later. When Aiken failed to return at the appointed hour with the Spear, the Lowlife party began its penetration without him, trusting that Felice’s growing metapsychic powers would be strong enough to destroy the torc factory.
The Lowlives entered the Coercer Guild complex in disguise. Felice melted the factory door with a bolt of mental energy—only to find that some sixty knights of the Host, led by Imidol the Second Coercer and Culluket the Interrogator, were waiting in ambush. The humans managed to kill fifteen Tanu, either with iron weapons or with Felice’s mindbolts. But the girl herself was eventually stunned, and the rest of the saboteurs, saving only Sister Amerie, Chief Burke, and Basil, were killed. The torc factory was undamaged.
Gomnol arrived when the fighting was over and coolly told the Host that he had everything in hand. But they refused to believe his protestations of innocence. Having improved their teamwork in metapsychic concert during the futile attacks on Elizabeth, they now combined to mind-blast Gomnol to death, knowing that the terrible Felice would be blamed. The girl was then divested of her golden torc and taken off by Culluket for interrogation. The other three saboteurs, badly wounded, were cast into the same prison as Stein and Sukey to await the end.
Far to the north of Muriah, in the vicinity of the time-gale at Castle Gateway, Madame Guderian and Claude prepared to act. They had made message holders from amber, a material known to pass successfully through the reversed time-warp, and enclosed notes warning the twenty-second-century operators to halt all time travel because of the enslaving of humans by the Tanu. As the sun rose, the two old people, rendered invisible by Madame’s metapsychic power, rushed toward the gate area.
High in the sky, Aiken was searching for them. He did not want the time-gate closed, since this would deprive him of potential subjects once he became King. Before Aiken could spot his quarry he was seized by a miniature tornado and flung far away. He had been anticipated by Nodonn—who had plans of his own for the old couple.
As Claude and Madame approached the gate, the image of Nodonn filled their minds. He was not there to stop them, but to explain why he was permitting them to succeed. Because of Tanu popular sentiment. Nodonn had not dared to close the time-gate himself; yet he knew that it posed a mortal threat to his race’s survival. He now told Claude and Madame that they must do their work visibly, so that there would be no doubt where the responsibility for the gate’s closure lay. Then he let them go.
Hand in hand, the two old people stepped into the recycling time-warp and returned to the twenty-second century. Their bodies crumbled to dust, but the amber message holders survived. The time-gate was shut down forthwith.
Now the time of the Grand Combat had almost arrived. The petty nobility of the Tanu showed a strange liking for Aiken Drum, and his kingly aspirations had become a very serious matter. Also, he now had the photonic Spear in working order. This sacred weapon had last been used officially in a duel of two great heroes back at the Ship’s Grave, when Tanu and Firvulag first arrived on Earth a thousand years earlier. The Tanu hero Bright Lugonn had wielded the Spear; the Firvulag hero Sharn the Atrocious had used a similar laserlike weapon called the Sword. In later years, the Sword had been used as the Grand Combat trophy and currently it was in the care of Nodonn Battlemaster. Aiken’s possession of the Spear gave a further air of legitimacy to his aspiration. According to Tanu chivalric usage, Aiken would be permitted to fight Nodonn, Spear to Sword, if he managed to attract a suitable number of adherents during the Grand Combat.
A threat to Aiken now materialized from a strange source: his friend Stein. Suffering in prison with Sukey, who had miscarried of their son, Stein’s mind was failing under the malignant influence of his gray torc. At the same time, the mental block installed by Gomnol began to weaken. It seemed that Stein would unwittingly betray Aiken’s link with the saboteurs and his conspiracy with the late human Lord Coercer.
Resisting the temptation to kill Stein and Sukey, Aiken begged Mayvar to get the pair out of Muriah, beyond the range of the Host’s mental snooping. Mayvar agreed to this, then went to a meeting of the clandestine Tanu Peace Faction, which hoped that Aiken would succeed in his bid for the kingship and bring a new era of peace and civilization to the Many-Colored Land.
Besides Mayvar, the Peace Faction included the hybrid High Table members Bleyn, Alberonn, and Katlinel the Darkeyed (who announced that she was betrothed to none other than A Sugoll, ruler of the Howlers), Dionket the Lord Healer, Creyn, and two banished Tanu stalwarts who might play special roles in the upcoming Grand Combat. One of these was Leyr, father of the hybrid Katlinel, who had been Lord Coercer before being deposed by Gomnol. Now that the latter was dead and his post vacant, the Host would put Imidol forward as a presidential candidate. The Peace Faction urged Leyr to challenge young Imidol in order to keep the Coercer Guild from Host control. Leyr was much older, but it was known that Imidol was weaker than Gomnol, so there seemed a slim chance that Leyr might win. The other banished Tanu present at the secret meeting was Minanonn the Heretic. Five hundred years before, he had been Battlemaster. But his pacifistic temperament was antithetical to the barbaric Tanu battle-religion, and he had been forced into exile deep in the Pyrénées. The Peace Faction hoped that, in the event Aiken defeated Nodonn, Minanonn would fight against Kuhal Earthshaker for the presidency of the Psychokinetic Guild. However, Minanonn refused to compromise his principles. Leyr did agree to go up against Imidol.
Later that same night, on a mountain above Muriah, Elizabeth and her great hot-air balloon awaited the arrival of Creyn. He was to bring Stein and Sukey to her and the balloon would carry all three to safety. But when the Tanu redactor arrived, he brought not two people but three. Curled up unconscious in the carriage was Felice. Creyn had found her in a cell next to the others, near death after torture by Culluket. Felice, like Stein, now wore a gray torc. But Sukey had been given a pair of iron shears to remove the devices once they were safely off the ground.
There was only one problem: The balloon gondola carried only three.
Elizabeth was despairing and furious. Both Brede and Dionket had pleaded with her to remain with them, doing important work that only a Grand Master metapsychic such as herself was capable of. But Elizabeth did not want the responsibility—especially if it meant that the Host would never relent in trying to kill her. Faced with the wretched Felice, Stein, and Sukey, she felt caught in the Shipspouse’s web.
Finally, Elizabeth sent the three freed prisoners away in her balloon. Then she returned to Brede’s room without doors and withdrew into a fiery mental cocoon that isolated her from all other minds.
The First Day of the Combat began.
It was a day of bloodless sporting events and ceremony. Mercy came to watch the thrilling contests with Bryan, who was literally dying for love of her. Then she left him in order to challenge old A
luteyn Craftsmaster for the presidency of the Creator Guild.
At the same time, the balloon carrying Felice, Stein, and Sukey drifted westward and landed alongside the Long Fjord east of Mt. Alborán. Felice recovered her senses—and more. In his tortures, Culluket had unwittingly duplicated a drastic mind-altering technique that Elizabeth had used on Brede to raise her to operancy; now Felice had gone operant, too. She no longer needed a torc in order to exercise her metapsychic powers; and these powers, at least the destructive aspects of psychokinesis and creativity, were greater than those of any other person in the world.
Felice was finally in a position to take revenge on the Tanu. Her plan was to blast open the Gibraltar Isthmus with psychoenergy, letting the Atlantic flood the empty Mediterranean Basin. The battleground of the White Silver Plain below Muriah was well below sea level. It did not bother Felice that thousands of Firvulag and humans would also drown in the cataclysm. She did not trust the Firvulag protestations of friendship (neither had Madame Guderian), and most of the humans in Muriah were creatures of the Tanu. In order to implement her plan, Felice required Stein’s help. As an ex-driller of the Earth’s crust, he had the technical knowledge to instruct her where to blast. At first. Stein refused to consider Felice’s terrible scheme. He had no grudge against the Tanu—none, that is, worth such a hideous retribution.
At that point, Felice triumphantly told Stein that King Thagdal was responsible for Sukey’s miscarriage, the guilt for which Stein had mistakenly borne himself. In his rage, Stein gave Felice all the help she needed. He showed her how to steal the fjord so that a head of water would build up in the Alboran Basin. Then he had her begin to blast open the Gibraltar Isthmus.