The Noborn King

by Julian May

  Aiken turned to the burly bearded Tanu, whose mental signature was as notorious as the triskelion badge on his azure tunic. “I suppose you flew the medic party here from Black Crag.”

  A minimal nod.

  “Thanks a lot, Minanonn. I wish you’d consider joining us. It’s a new regime in the Many-Colored Land. Lots of things are changing. You could help.”

  The heretical ex-Battlemasier allowed himself a wintry smile. “I’ll be watching you from the Pyrénées. Visit me some time. Without your army.”

  “You got a deal.” Aiken thanked Creyn and Dionket, set his feathered hat very carefully onto his throbbing head, then hesitated as one last item of importance came to mind.

  “I don’t suppose you know what became of my Spear?”

  Elizabeth sighed. “It’s safe on your flagship schooner, guarded night and day by Bleyn and Alberonn. And it’s been repaired.”

  “Kaleidoscopic!” The King beamed at them all. “In a way, I’m glad I didn’t get to use it on Felice. It’s a sacred weapon, you know. Too good for the likes of her. I’m glad we finished her off with mindpower. Too bad about old Cull—but that’s probably for the best, too.”

  Walking a trifle unsteadily, he gave them a jaunty wave as he went out the door. There was a sound of scattered cheering that grew until the jungle noises were overwhelmed. And when the shouting and the mind-cries fell off, the music of the Song look its place, carrying from the camp to the boats moored out on the waters of the Gulf of Guadalquivir.

  The Río Genil flowed down from Mulhacén and swung wide, following its new course around a region covered deep in stony rubble. The dead bodies in the landslide were well-buried, secure from prowling jackals and other scavengers.

  Far under the mound a tiny white flame burned within a ruby, waiting inside its dark temenos for fresh fuel.

  The End Of Part Three

  PART IV

  The Lord Of Misrule

  1

  MOREYN OF VAR-MESK HUDDLED IN PITCH-DARKNESS IN THE deserted materials yard of the glassworks. A fine drizzle coalesced on his wispy hair, ran down the collar of his cloak, and dripped onto his neck. He sneezed. It was unseasonably chilly for the middle of June, with a sharp wind blowing off the New Sea. The weather, he reflected morosely, like nearly everything else in the Many-Colored Land these days, seemed to have gone mad.

  Miserable, Moreyn scanned the black sky over the water and wished Celadeyr and the redactor would hurry. Did he dare to put up a small psychocreative umbrella while he waited? It was effete, but—Tana’s teeth!—brute endurance wasn’t the only virtue, nor was prudence necessarily a sign of cosy-wallowing or Firvulagish degeneracy.

  He sneezed again. The invisible umbrella went up, and for good measure he spun a discreet infrared pod about his soaked feet. What could be keeping Celo? He was nearly an hour late.

  Not that Moreyn was anxious to relinquish his sacred charge. It had been an honor to nurse the Baltlemaster, and gratifying when Nodonn praised his cleverness in securing the rare materials needed for the repair of the Sword, and his refurbishing of the armor and fashioning of a new gauntlet to cover the wooden hand. (That hand!)

  But as his strength returned. Nodonn had chafed in idleness. He refused to stay hidden in his salty dungeon cell, and began to prowl among the lower levels of the trona diggings during the graveyard shift. Only ramas were about then to observe him, and there was no chance that they might betray his presence. But Nodonn had taken to helping the apes in their labors, using his recovering psychokinesis to load the gondola cars with excessive amounts of mineral, which might have been noted by the gray-torc foremen who checked the schedule. When Moreyn put a stop to this game, the bored Battlemaster began playing with the mice. Swarms of the rodents infested the citadel’s sewers and gained access to the glass works via an enormous drain. More than once, as Moreyn came to minister to his patient, he had been startled by serried ranks of the little creatures—marching, countermarching, and performing precision drills, while Nodonn reviewed his miniature host seated on a lump of cullet glass, like some sardonic incarnation of Apollo Smintheus.

  Yes . . . it was high time that the fast-recuperating Battlemaster moved on to Afaliah. Where the hand could be fixed and the portent wiped out.

  In spite of his warming feet, the Glasscrafter experienced a thrill of dread. The One-Handed Warrior! According to hoary Tanu tradition, it was one of the direst forecasts of the Nightfall War.

  Moreyn, came the secret call on his intimate mode:

  (At last!) Here Down here, Celo.

  And there came two dim riders spiraling down, their leather slormsuits and the bodies of their chalikos reflecting fog-fuzzed city lights until they entered the shadowy yard.

  “Hail, Creative Brother,” Moreyn greeted the Lord of Afaliah, who swung down out of his saddle. But when he turned to the other rider he went stock-still, lidding the astonishment that flooded his mind. The slender form was human and female, and though the mental signature and face were masked, he knew that this was not a redactor but a Most Exalted member of Celo’s Guild of Creators.

  When she lifted the visor of her hood, Moreyn exclaimed: “Great Queen! You live! But it was said—we all mourned— you and the other victims of the monster Felice—”

  “A necessary hoax,” said Mercy. “Take me to my husband.”

  “Oh, yes I see!” Moreyn sneezed twice. “To disarm the surveillance of the usurper I see! Come this way.”

  They left the chalikos tied to a railing and entered a disused storeroom crowded with obsolete machinery. Moreyn lifted a trapdoor and they descended into one of the many tunnels that underlay the city of the glassmakers. At first, the way was lit only by a psychocreative flame springing from Moreyn’s finger, for they traversed workings that had long been abandoned. But then they came into a region where the hot salt springs still bubbled, depositing crystalline masses of hydrous sodium carbonate that were mined by silent crews of ramapithecine apes.

  Guttering torches filled the steamy chambers with an orange glow. The layers of white and pastel evaporite were streaked with soot, making infernal murals that almost seemed alive in the wavering light. The springs burbled and emitted foul-smelling vapor. The small apes with their great lustrous eyes wore skin buskins and mittens as protection from the alkali deposits. They chipped off the trona crystals with vitredur picks, shoveled the mineral into waiting gondolas, and trundled the cars away to a lift.

  “What a hellish place!” Mercy said. “The poor little beasts.”

  “They only work a six-hour shift,” Moreyn said defensively. “The smell’s only sulfur, and there’s plenty of fresh air. Dear Lady, our mines are really a paradise compared to the gold diggings at Amalizan . . .”

  “And he’s had to stay down here?” Mercy said, stricken. They were descending ever deeper. It was hot, and there was a rumble behind the saline walls, as of a concealed cataract or mysterious machines.

  “Great Goddess,” Celadeyr grumbled, pulling off his hood and unfastening the front of his suit. “It’s a damn steam bath! How much farther, Mori?”

  The Glasscrafter led them to a barred wooden door. Its surface trembled faintly and the noise reverberated from behind it. “Through here.” Again he ignited the tip of his finger. He lifted the bars with his PK and swung the portal open like the gale of Tartarus.

  They entered a great downslanting gut that carried a roaring stream of foul water. The air was a good fifteen degrees cooler and pervaded by a cloacal stench. Mercy gasped in dismay and Celadeyr hurriedly refastened his suit, pulled up the hood, and closed the visor.

  “Follow me. Be careful.” Moreyn trotted out along a cat-walk, holding high his hand of glory. “This is an underground section of the Var River. It carries the main sewage outfall and the factory effluent over the continental shelf. This tunnel used to be leagues long. But with the New Sea rising it becomes shorter every day. Turn here.”

  They entered a branch tunnel, mercifully dry. A few do
zen mice fled as Moreyn opened the last door.

  Mercy pushed ahead of the Glasscrafter into a small lighted room, little more than a den carved in striped evaporite and equipped with a minimum of furniture and supplies. Nodonn stood there pallid and gaunt-faced, his golden head brushing the low ceiling, wasted frame clad in a white woolen tunic. He held out both hands to Mercy—one of flesh and the other of wood.

  She burst into tears. He held her against his chest, his heart on fire, and said to Moreyn and Celadeyr, “Leave us. Wait above ground. I know the way out of here very well.”

  When the two men had gone and the door was closed, Nodonn lifted her and sought her lips. Their minds cried wordless greeting, beyond happiness and beyond sorrow. They lived, and now they were reunited, but the soul-hunger of the terrible empty months could scarcely be appeased in that initial conjunction. The time was too short and they dared not expend in mere ecstasy the life-force that would be needed for the impending journey. So the daemon’s coming was a sigh, and the belle dame’s fulfillment gentle as an eyelid’s soft closing before sunlight. Then they held each other, warm, minds still in sweet fusion.

  “Motherhood has deepened you. Queen,” he said “You are a fountain of repose. A wellspring of comfort.”

  “All my comfort is for you. I’ll never leave you now—not even to return to Agraynel. She is only my flesh. You are my mind’s life. How could I have doubted that you lived? How could I have accepted him? Can you forgive my defilement?”

  “If you forgive mine.” He told her about Huldah. “It was not done freely, but I know now that I had dark joy in the shaming. And now this wretched hybrid woman carries the son I would have given you, Rosmar: the first of my Host.”

  “Never mind, love. We’ll make it right somehow, now that we’re together again.”

  She felt his body stiffen. He drew away, the two warm hands, soft and hard, clasping her shoulders. “As to that . . . you may have to return to him.”

  “No!” she cried harshly. Her horror was like a knife, and there was fear as well. “What do you mean?”

  He turned from her and began to take off his tunic. From beneath the camp bed he pulled two sacks, one with his glass armor and another with the suit of padding. “It won’t be easy, deposing him now that he’s been acclaimed King by the battle-company. Leaving aside the matter of my gaining support from the people . . . we must consider him as a military objective. He’s a formidable metapsychic adversary. I can’t farsense him, Mercy. Even when he’s not wearing those Milieu screens, he’s too strong a mind-guarder for me to penetrate. I can’t even follow his physical movements unless some other person is with him, scattering inadvertent clues. The only way I have of spying on him is through you . . .”

  Her mind was shrouded. The sea-deep eyes were opaque, full of fresh tears. “I’ve only just gained you back. And you want me to go?”

  “Of course I don’t!” he said, in a voice of anguish.

  She let her lips rest on his naked chest, breathing the exotic pheromones, hearing his heart. “I’ll go to him if you tell me to, love. But I’ve had a foreseeing . . .”

  Her face was completely hidden by her long auburn hair and she shivered inside her storm-sun of dark green kidskin. He held her tightly. “What have you foreseen?”

  It was her mind that spoke:

  My death is in him. He loves me and he’ll kill me. It was the same vision poor Cull had of Felice. (And the two of us condemned ones were able to calm one another. A fine joke, that!)

  “Never mind Cull. I can understand Aiken loving you. But to kill you—? Nonsense! You are the Lady Creator. Your energies are lifebuilding!”

  “For Tanu, perhaps,” she whispered. “But not for humans. Remember Bryan, who died of me.”

  Nodonn’s tone was cynical. “Our Shining Usurper has put it about that his own blood is Tanu, as yours. If he believes his own tale, he can scarcely paint you a succubus.”

  “Perhaps it’s envy, then. My creativity brings life. His psychoenergy is only for conquest, destruction of all opposition. Aiken would always forswear love in favor of power. He can’t forgive himself for loving me. He’ll only be safe when I’m dead.”

  “He’s no monster like Felice.”

  “No,” she admitted. “He could have thrown Cull to her and perhaps fended off Felice’s attack. But he didn’t. He tried to save Cull as well as himself.” Her mind brooded over memories of the rencontre on the Genil. “Aiken was frightfully injured in that fight, you know. Even now, his powers are greatly diminished.”

  “I know.” Nodonn revealed satisfaction. “I’m counting on it.”

  She looked up at him finally. “But it would be easier for you if I were there in Goriah. Oh, my love. Of course I’ll return if you want me to!” Her eyes were wild. “I’ll gladly die for you.”

  He was hauling on the padded gambeson. “Aiken won’t kill you. Not even if he suspects I’m alive. No normal man could kill his beloved.”

  “No normal Tanu man,” she said sadly. “Humans are different, vein of my heart.” But then her laugh rang out in the salt cave. “Ah, who cares about my silly second sight? In the Milieu, precognition was considered a hopelessly undisciplined metafaculty—sometimes reliable, more often a fraud. And look how dubious the sight is among your folk! Why, Brede said that Elizabeth is the most important person in the world. Imagine! That futile self-doubter. I know who the most important person really is. You!”

  He was dressing swiftly in the rosy-gold armor, his expression somber. “More likely that mysterious human operant over in North America. Abaddon. Compared to him, Aiken and I are a pair of metapsychic infants.”

  Mercy’s antic mood became instantly serious. “That one’s playing his own game. Celo suspects he may have deliberately let Felice brainburn Aiken. There was something distinctly fishy about the mental surges at the climax of the fight. But of course I couldn’t tell. I was too busy digging out from under a piece of hillside that had fallen on me. Celo came to rescue me, and that was when we decided I would have to play dead. He took back my poor little empty emerald helmet...”

  Nodonn’s piercing gaze had narrowed. “So Abaddon might have used Felice against Aiken. How fraught with possibilities! I wonder if this North American is open to other offers?”

  “You may be able to find out,” Mercy said. “His daughter is at Afaliah.”

  “What?”

  Mercy nodded. “Cloud fractured her pelvis and the redactors thought it would be safer if she recovered at Celo’s place before going on to Goriah.” Her look became mischievous. “You’ll have to think carefully before admitting her to your conspiracy, I suppose. But Cloud Remillard would make a fine ally for you, Battlemaster. She’s a Grand Master equivalent in PK when she’s fully operational, and quite good in redaction as well. She’s also blonde, and a real smasher. Just your type.”

  The towering Apollo threw back his golden head and roared with laughter. Then both of his hands framed her face. “You are the type I waited eight hundred years for. Only you.” And then his inhuman eyes were stinging and he kissed her upturned brow.

  She seized his true hand. “Let me stay with you in Afaliah. Please! At least until you’re healed. Oh, don’t send me back to him until we’ve made up for some of the emptiness.”

  “A little while,” he agreed. “Certainly a little while. But it would take nine months in Skin to regrow the hand and lower arm and I won’t stand for it. I’ll go against Aiken just as soon as I can gather a force While his mind is still weakened.”

  Mercy drew back, her mental walls up. “You’d fight him with one hand?”

  “The Sword-wielding one is in fine shape.” He flexed the wooden fingers expertly with his PK. “It may not be much to look at, but it serves.”

  She lifted the prosthesis, turned it slowly. “Wood? Ah, no. Nothing so base will suit you, my daemon lover!” Her glance darted around the cell. “Gold would do—but we have only our two torcs, alas!” Her eye fell on the orna
te eating utensils that Moreyn had furnished his distinguished guest. “Silver! Silver you shall have, from the mind of the Lady Creator herself. My loving gift to you, Battlemaster.”

  She gestured, and the gleaming plate and bowl and cup and pitcher shimmered, fused, went amorphous, then seemed to whirl in a scintillant metallic cloud at the end of his outstretched arm. “Silver!” she cried again. “Nodonn of the Silver Hand!”

  It was done. The crude device carved by Isak Henning had vanished. In its place was a perfect replica of the missing member, mirror-bright, so subtly articulated that the sliding joints were invisible. Mercy bent over the hand and kissed each finger, and finally, the palm.

  “I will wear it until I destroy Aiken Drum,” he vowed. “Until I am King of the Many-Colored Land and you are my Queen.”

  He drew on the two glass gauntlets and opened the door for her. Neither one of them paid any heed to the foul cataract as they climbed back to the surface by the light of their shining faces.

  2

  “READY ON THE TEST BOARD?” CAME BETSY’S HOLLOW VOICE from inside the flux-tap reticulator.

  “Yo,” said Ookpik, untangling the cables.

  “Tickle the input to the tertiary MHD-flow regulator,” Betsy ordered. All that was visible of him was a great mound of farthingale skirts lying on the cerametal decking. His upper body seemed to have been swallowed by the exotic mechanism he was working on.

  “Oh, yeah, the MHD-three realty looking good,” Ookpik reported.

  From the access hatch came a hand with chipped enamel on the fingernails, groping in air. “It’s make-or-break time. Let’s have the number-ten therm needle, that pink chip with the two-cent hardwires, and the exotic component thingy with the code like a deuce of spades.”

  “You got ’em,” Ookpik slapped the items into Betsy’s hand. There was an obscure sizzling sound. A few wisps of smoke floated out around the engineer’s tightly corseted waist. Then came a falsetto shriek as Betsy struggled frantically out of the reticulator’s bowels, tearing at his throat and uttering picturesque Elizabethan epithets. “Set my damn ruff on fire soldering,” he explained, once the blackened bit of lace was ripped off. He adjusted his pearl-studded wig, fitted the magnifying optics back over his eyes, and dived back into the machine. There were additional sizzlings and a toccatina of elfin chimes.