King of the Scepter'd Isle (Song of Earth)

by Coney, Michael G.

  “Well, yes. You and I have always been friends, Fang, and I wouldn’t want this to come between us.”

  “Of course it comes between us,” shouted the Miggot suddenly, voicing a pent-up grievance, “you silly little bugger! Poxy is a conniving swine! Poxy wants to sell us out to the humans!”

  “The Great Poxy believes in cooperation, and that’s what we’re doing. And it’s better for all of us. The giants supply us with food and stuff. The Lady Guinevere is a frequent visitor to the beach. She says she is our patron.”

  “And what do you do in return?”

  “Nothing, Miggot. The Lady Guinevere feeds us out of the goodness of her heart.”

  “Why don’t you gather your own damned food?”

  “These are early days, and besides, it’s winter. The humans have kindly offered to tide us over until the spring crops are available. And there’s the Great Poxy’s Grand Scheme, of course.” He shut his mouth quickly, having said too much.

  The Miggot was on to it in a flash. “Grand Scheme?”

  “Nobody knows the details. But a whole new series of creatures will be produced, and the beach will flow with milk and honey.”

  “Listen to me, Pong.” The Miggot’s eyes were fierce in the light of the fire. “Your Great Bloody Poxy’s talking nonsense. I’m the only gnome in Mara Zion who produces new creatures. I am the guardian of the Sharan, and that’s the way things are staying!”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little selfish, Miggot? If you persist in that kind of outlook, no wonder the Great Poxy talks about taking steps.”

  The Miggot stared at Pong, aghast. “Your mind has been warped! You’re talking heresy!” With an effort he got himself under control. “You’re questioning our whole society, Pong. The Guilds. One gnome, one job.”

  Pong said, “We’re another society now, we beach gnomes. We have our leader and our Memorizer—your own father, Fang—and we need our Sharan. Or failing that, to use the words of the Great Poxy, your Sharan. We are new. Our needs are greater than yours.”

  “Fang, this is worse than I ever imagined! Look at his eyes! Those are the eyes of a fanatic!”

  “They do look a little bright. But there’s no point in arguing about it, Miggot. We have the journey to consider.”

  “Pong,” said the Miggot, “forget what we’ve just been talking about. Put it out of your mind and listen to what I have to say. You must take us to Trevarron Isle again. Together with our cargo. The future of the gnomish race depends on it.”

  “But what about the winter storms!” cried the Intrepid One.

  “Pong, look into my eyes. Deeper. Deeper. Think of nothing at all, and repeat this after me: Bugger the winter storms.”

  “Bugger the winter storms,” said Pong woodenly.

  “The winter storms are nothing to a sailor of my capabilities and genetic structure.”

  “The winter storms are nothing to a sailor of my capabilities and genetic structure.”

  “Miggot,” whispered Fang, impressed. “How did you do that?”

  “The power of the gnomish eye. We’ll have no more trouble with him now. Pong! Let us provision the boat for our journey.”

  Pong stared at him. “We’d be crazy to go out there in this weather. Have you seen those waves?”

  “But you said they were nothing to a sailor of your capabilities,” Fang reminded him.

  “Only because the Miggot wanted me to.”

  “Pong,” said Fang, hating himself for what he was about to say, “do you remember your father? Now, what would people say—what would the Great Poxy say—if they knew that your timidity, and that alone, had doomed the gnomish species to extinction? They would say you were no better than Poop the Craven. The Miggot would make excuses for you, of course, being the kindly fellow that he is. He would say your genetic instability was no fault of your own. But no more would you be spoken of as Pong the Intrepid. Forevermore you would be Pong the Timorous, a victim of your father’s genes. And your grandfather, Pew the Valiant, would become suspect too. In fairness to gnomish history, I would have to examine my memory to confirm the accuracy of the exploits that earned him his name.

  “However,” said Fang quickly, noticing a tear gathering in the corner of Pong’s eye, “there is the other side of the coin. All gnomes must know fear in order to overcome it. That’s where true courage lies. Do you know fear, Pong?”

  “I know fear.”

  “Then you are a fortunate gnome, for—”

  “Let’s take the bloody boat and go without him, Fang. You’re talking too much.”

  “For yours is the opportunity to redeem the failures of your father and his father before him, so that evermore the name Pong the Intrepid will be spoken with awe and wonder. Bear in mind that I am the Memorizer. I will remember your deeds this day—and through me, all gnomedom will remember forever!”

  And now Pong’s eyes were shining with pride.

  By noon the wind had abated, but the seas were still restless with the memory of its strength, throwing themselves against the western rocks of Trevarron Isle and raising a spray that drifted inland like fog.

  Elaine tasted the salt on her lips as she climbed the ridge. From the summit she could see her world, and a tiny world it was: a fragile land bounded by the white lace of wave against shore. A curtain of sleet hid the horizon so that she stood at the center of a gray sphere, all alone.

  She walked slowly down the close-cropped hillside and came to a little cairn. She’d intended to bury the baby on the southern slope, so that he would get the winter sunshine and the early spring flowers. She found a suitable spot but was unable to drive the spade into the ground. Her arms wouldn’t work for her. So she’d stood there crying, helpless, while the baby waited in the cottage for its resting place.

  Eventually her feet had taken her over the ridge onto the northern slope, and this time the little grave had been dug. She’d fetched the baby, laid him in the bottom of the hole, and pulled the shawl over his face so the soil wouldn’t dirty him. Then she’d filled the grave up. She’d cried again when the soil formed a baby-sized mound above ground level, and she piled a few granite rocks around it, to disguise it and yet to mark it.

  The Norman warrior would never come back. Elaine knew that now. The death of the baby had severed the link. It was all for the good, because she now realized that the whole thing—the killing of her parents, the murderous warrior’s pretense of love, the pregnancy, the birth, and the death—had driven her a little insane for a while. Now, a couple of months later, surrounded by a severe winter that demanded all her time, she could think more clearly. The Norman wouldn’t come back, and just as well. And the mound caused by the baby’s body had flattened out. Come spring the grass would grow. Come spring she would take her boat to Mara Zion and find herself a man.

  She arrived at the beach and watched a sailboat reaching in, regularly disappearing behind the backs of the eastbound waves, appearing again a little closer. It was very small, a gnomish boat.

  Elaine wondered why the gnomes had come again.

  12

  SPRING TIDE

  OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS KING ARTHUR FOLLOWED his legend across the land, spreading the word of chivalry as far as Badon in the east and Wroxeter in the north. The warlords of the hill forts were united, the dry stone walls were pulled down and used to enclose new fields, and roomy buildings were erected where once people had crouched in huts and roofed pits.

  At Badon, Arthur and his forces met the Saxons, led by King Aelle.

  Castle Badon stood on a singular hill rising from the rolling plains, guarding the junction of two ancient Roman ways: Ermine Street and the Great Ridgeway. It was an important strategic position. Both roads were in constant use, and for a while an uneasy truce existed; Saxon might meet Briton and nod a greeting or draw a knife as the mood took him. Generally, the closer he was to Castle Badon, the more likely he would be to draw the knife. Castle Badon was occupied by the Saxons.

  Art
hur and his Britons attacked. After three days of fierce battle the Saxons were defeated, with the loss of almost a thousand men. Arthur’s forces occupied the castle. The Saxons retreated east reluctantly, burning villages as they went. Arthur paused and looked north.

  Mara Zion was a long way behind him.

  * * *

  One day Fang visited the northeast corner of the forest to collect a pair of hinges from Scowl the Accursed. It was a fine spring morning and he sang in his gruff voice as he rode. On such a day, in such a pleasant part of the forest, the troubles of gnomedom seemed far away.

  He saw the smoke of a furnace rising over the trees and soon found Scowl hammering vigorously at a flattened strip of iron. After a while he dipped it in a pot of water with a great sizzling. Finally he held it up and examined it. It seemed to be the blade of a knife.

  “Oh, God, what have I done!” Scowl uttered the traditional Absolution.

  Fang looked around at the trappings of evil: the furnaces, the bellows, the anvils, the hammers, the pots. It was a curiously empty scene.

  “Where is everybody?”

  “I’m everybody there is,” said Scowl gloomily.

  “What happened to the others?”

  “They’ve gone. Or they’ve died. I don’t know. They drifted away. And where does a gnome go when he drifts away from here, Fang? You tell me. Who would let an Accursed Gnome into his burrow and risk being struck by lightning? No, my guess is they’ve all died.”

  “But … why did they go?”

  “They had no work. The giants can make all the things we used to make, and much better, too, because they’re bigger and stronger. And they don’t have to worry about breaking the Examples. It’s a big strain on an Accursed Gnome; we break two of the three Examples every day. And even ordinary gnomes like you feel unhappy about what we do. So people have started getting their ironwork from the giants. It leaves their consciences cleaner.”

  The sun seemed to have lost its sparkle as Fang rode home, the hinges in his saddlebag. Another gnomish settlement was about to become extinct, and another piece of gnomish culture—although a reprehensible one—would be lost. What could be done?

  He lay awake all that night, thinking about it, and by morning had come to an inescapable conclusion.

  He put it to Nyneve on his way to the monthly Memorizing meeting. “Nyneve, I think we gnomes are going to have to leave.”

  “You don’t mean join up with those stupid gnomes down by the beach, Fang? They’re all mixed up with humans! That empty-headed Gwen’s adopted them, ever since she came snooping around the forest because she got bored at home. That was five years ago, and she’s caused all kinds of trouble since then.”

  “We have heard stories,” said Fang, “although we try not to have contact with the abominable Poxy and his people.”

  “And that unspeakable Palomides is tied up with them. And Lancelot. You think he’d have more sense.”

  “I know all about Palomides,” said Fang bitterly. “He started the whole thing off by killing our rabbits—I saw him do it. And Poxy obviously knew all about it before we’d even told him, so he must be in on it too. Between them, they split gnomedom in half, and I think I know why. They want to get their hands on the Sharan. They’ve snooped around from time to time, but the Miggot’s too clever for them. He keeps moving her from place to place.”

  “I didn’t know about that!”

  “You’ve had enough problems of your own.”

  “I’m sorry. I suppose I haven’t been around much lately.”

  “Well, anyway, we have no intention of joining Poxy’s camp. We’ve held that little bugger off for five years, and we’ll hold him off until the end.”

  “Where will you go, then?”

  “Back where we came from. Back to the spacebat.”

  “Oh, Fang. Are things that bad? How would you get there?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve searched my memory lobe and found nothing. Somehow there must be a way for gnomes to get off Earth, and I have to find out what it is. Otherwise we’ll die out. We’ll become extinct.”

  “Unless you all have more children. You’ve shown them it can be done. You’ve had three yourself.”

  Flushing, Fang hurried away to his Memorizing meeting. The Princess and he were inordinately proud of Will, Eve, and Lynette, but their pride was not shared by the rest of gnomedom.

  In fact, gnomedom’s disapproval of him seemed to have grown over the last five years. This was made quite clear at the official meetings, when Fang committed to memory anything important that had happened during the past month. Fang was indispensable for this purpose—otherwise, he thought gloomily, they would have dispensed with him long ago. Fang was the only gnome who knew the Memorizer’s Apothegm, the lengthy saying that unlocked the hereditary memory lobe of the brain and allowed access to memories from the far-distant past. All gnomes accumulated the memories of their ancestors in the memory lobe, but only those who knew the Apothegm could recall them.

  Gwen would have thought Fang a pessimist. To her simple mind it seemed everything was going well for gnomes. They were well fed, clothed, and housed; and they had proper jobs—which was something they’d never had before, according to that delightful little Drexel Poxy.

  The beach gnomes had been appointed official jesters at Castle Menheniot. They sang and danced for her guests, and in return she had become their patron and protector.

  It hadn’t been easy to bring about the present situation. Arthur had objected strongly, for one. He’d said it was demeaning for gnomes to be so employed. He’d said they should be left alone to lead their own lives. But recently she’d been able to point to the results of such a policy in other gnomish settlements. Such settlements had simply died out. The gnomes—unable to compete with new animals, new diseases, and the heavy-footed presence of humans—had withered away.

  But not her little colony at Mara Zion beach. They thrived. New gnomes were drifting in all the time and joining them. And Arthur spent so little time at Camelot (so convenient an abbreviation for Castle Menheniot that she’d begun to believe it really was the place referred to in the legends) that she had little difficulty in strengthening her relationship with the beach gnomes. Or with those excellent men, Lancelot and Palomides, either. Really, Arthur ought to spend a little less time fighting around the country and politicking in Cirencester, and more time with her. … A woman could find time hanging heavily on her hands, left alone in a drafty old castle all day.

  Fortunately she was a woman who was interested in making the world a better place for humans and gnomes alike. And now, on this fine spring morning, she was riding south to visit her little proteges, with Lancelot at her side to protect her from bandits. A cart trundled behind, driven by Ned Palomides. Under any other regime Ned might well have been one of those bandits, but she had won him over to her cause by treating him like a responsible human being. The cart was loaded with all the things the gnomes needed but were unable to produce for themselves: shovels, knives, tiny metal cooking pots; hammers, nails, and saws for building (her beach gnomes were living in proper little cottages aboveground these days, instead of burrowing like animals). There was even some venison—the gnomes were developing human tastes in food, she was pleased to find.

  “Hullo,” said Lancelot suddenly. “What’s that?” He reined to a halt and peered into the bushes. “I thought I saw something … there!” He pointed. “A gnome. Come on out, fellow, and we’ll give you a ride south!”

  But the creature that emerged was the strangest gnome Gwen had ever seen. He was excessively slender and fragile in appearance, and his face was triangular with tilting eyes. He wore clothes of a soft green fabric, and his cap was made of the same cloth, so that it drooped instead of rising to the usual jaunty point.

  “I’m Pan,” he said in answer to Gwen’s query.

  “I thought I knew the gnomes well. I’ve never seen you before.”

  The little creature drew himself up, affronted.
“I am not a gnome. I’m Pan, as I told you.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you meant Pan was your name.”

  “It’s my name, but it’s also what I am. I’m one of a kind. There is no other Pan in the forest.”

  “Impossible!” Palomides chuckled. “It takes two to breed.”

  “Perhaps your father and mother are dead?” suggested Gwen sympathetically.

  “My father and mother are the Sharan.”

  “Is that so?” Palomides gazed at the little elf with growing interest. “Come and sit on the cart beside me, Pan. Where are you bound?”

  “Anywhere away from the Miggot. South is fine. Drexel Poxy has a flourishing colony at the beach, I’m told. Perhaps they’ll appreciate me there.”

  When they came in sight of the beach, however, it became clear that the flourishing colony was receiving a setback. A brisk gale was blowing in from the south, funneling between the headlands at the entrance to the cove and driving long rollers up the sand toward the cluster of tiny huts at the forest edge. To make matters worse, the wind was herding heavy clouds across an angry sky. The first drops of rain stung Gwen’s face. She clutched her cloak around her.

  A mounted gnome came bounding up, snatching his cap off as the wind was about to carry it away. She recognized him as Mold the Outrageous. “Lady Guinevere!” he cried. “We’re going to be flooded out!”

  Now she could see hurrying gnomes carrying tables, chairs, cooking pots, and anything else movable out of the houses and up the eastern hillside. Halfway up the rocky slope, a pile of possessions testified to their industry so far.

  “But the sea’s a long way from your houses,” she said.

  “High tide isn’t till mid-afternoon, and the water’s already as high as spring tides usually get! The southerly gale is pushing the sea toward us!”

  By now her little friend Pong the Intrepid had arrived on his rabbit. “The Great Poxy foretold this!” he cried. “But nobody would listen!”

  “Sexual intercourse!” shouted Mold in disgust. It was exclamations like this that had earned him his name. Quite possibly, years ago they had been designed to shock the gnomes and to demonstrate his individuality, but now they had become automatic. “It was Poxy who persuaded us to build so close to the beach. ‘We ride south!’ he said. And when our rabbits began to get their feet wet, he said, ‘We stop here!’ And where is he now, when we need him most? Nowhere to be seen!”