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

by Coney, Michael G.

  A forest of gnomish hands shot skyward.

  “Well, that wasn’t too bad,” observed Bison. “I think Old Crotchet is on our side.”

  “Crotchet has arthritis, Bison,” Lady Duck explained quietly. “He can’t raise his arm above his shoulder. But never mind.” The battle lost, she smiled. “You can take a well-earned holiday from the cares of office. The fate of gnomedom rests in younger hands.”

  “Fang! Fang!” roared the gnomes, hoisting their hero shoulder-high.

  And an echoing cry came from the forest: “Fang! Fang!”

  Startled, the gnomes nearly dropped the Slayer of the Daggertooth. “Who’s that?” Fang shouted, quickly assuming his role as spokesman for the forest gnomes.

  “It’s us.”

  “That sounds like Mold,” said the Miggot. “What the hell does he want?” A small flock of shytes could be seen circling above the treetops. “And the Gooligog. This looks like an official visit.”

  “A resumption of diplomatic relations,” suggested Jack o’ the Warren. “That often happens on a change of leadership.”

  “The news of the coup hasn’t had time to reach them yet, you fool,” snapped Lady Duck. “The truth is, they’ve come to resume diplomatic relations with King Bison. I only hope their disappointment won’t change their minds.”

  “Are we sure we want diplomatic relations with Poxy?” asked Bison doubtfully.

  “No!” cried the Miggot. “We bloody well don’t!” He faced the forest. “If there are any followers of Poxy in there, you can bugger off back to the beach right now! We have nothing to say to you!”

  “We’re not followers of Poxy,” said Mold, entering the clearing on foot with the Gooligog, Pong the Intrepid, Bart o’ Bodmin, and various other beach gnomes. “Poxy is a mere memory in the Gooligog’s mind, a sad chapter in gnomish history. Poxy was deposed last night, and I am the new leader of the beach gnomes. I intend to uphold the Kikihuahua Examples,” he assured them, “so far as is feasible.”

  “That’s good news, Mold,” said Fang.

  “I’ll go further. I believe the beach is an unsuitable place for gnomes to live. We’ve been dupes of the abominable Poxy for five years, but we are dupes no more. Our eyes were opened at Camelot.” He went on to describe Poxy’s perfidy, concluding, “And so Poxy rode north, back to where he came from, and his disciples, shamed, departed in all directions. We came back here where we belong.”

  “How many of you?” asked the Miggot.

  “A few. Twenty. Most of those who left five years ago. We were never Poxy’s gnomes, really. Our hearts were always here in the forest.”

  “I moved back into the forest long ago,” explained the Gooligog.

  “I never left my cave at the other end of the beach,” said Pong.

  “And I only stayed in the village,” said Mold, “in order to gather evidence of Poxy’s wrongdoings.”

  “And what about you, Bart?” asked the Miggot. “What’s your excuse?”

  “I was one of Poxy’s dupes,” admitted Bart, glancing unhappily from gnome to gnome. “I throw myself on your mercy.”

  “Begone!” shouted the Miggot. “Back to Bodmin where you belong!”

  “I can’t go back to Bodmin. Poxy’s gone there.”

  “Then go somewhere else, but never enter the forest of Mara Zion again!”

  “I say, Miggot,” said Fang, “that’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?”

  “He’s an untrustworthy gnome, Fang. He tricked us from the start. He cost us six years of anger and despair!”

  Elmera, faced with the difficult choice of siding with her husband or Fang, chose Fang. “Balderdash, Miggot! The last six years have been no different from any other! Your whole life has consisted of anger and despair!”

  Miggot, staring at her furiously, became aware that her breasts jiggled in a fascinating manner when she was annoyed. It seemed to put a different complexion on things. His fury abated. “You’re right, Elmera,” he muttered. “I must watch myself.”

  Amazed, she said, “I’m used to it.” Really, he was quite a handsome gnome when he was aroused, with the most arresting eyes. And he was probably the cleverest gnome there. People listened to him when he shouted. That was something to be proud of.

  More was to come. There was a commotion in the forest: the sound of yelling and snapping twigs.

  “That’s the remainder of our group,” said Mold. “They didn’t want to show themselves until our situation was resolved. They are proud gnomes.”

  The noises approached, and suddenly the proud gnomes burst from the undergrowth in a solid phalanx, shouting excitedly.

  “Welcome back,” said Fang.

  “Speech!” shouted Lady Duck. “You must address your new empire in the proper manner, Fang. This is the occasion for a rousing speech!” She smiled at him broadly. She was always loyal to whoever was the gnomes’ leader, and she was incapable of bearing a grudge.

  “A rousing speech!” chorused the gnomes, lifting Fang and setting him on a stump.

  Fang regarded his people. “It’s good to see everybody together again,” he began. “And being the kind of gnomes we are, we’ll forget the past and treat the newcomers with understanding. We will set the moles to use and get the new dwellings built right away, and meanwhile I’m sure each of us will take a guest into his own home.”

  He surveyed the ex-beach gnomes. “A lot has happened in the past few years. We’ve had to adapt to the joining of happentracks and the arrival of giants. The giants are our friends, but that doesn’t mean gnomes must become humanized—as I’m sure the newcomers now realize. New customs have arisen to meet the changing circumstances. At Memorizing sessions, for instance, we’ve been taking more of an interest in our gnomish heritage.

  “We’ve been hearing gnomish fables from the past, and learning gnomish poems. Perhaps I should take this opportunity to recite one of our favorites now. It’s short and easy to learn—and quite rewarding too.”

  “A poem!” cried the newcomers happily. If Fang was going to teach them a poem, it meant they were accepted.

  And, smiling at them blandly, Fang began:

  The shape of a gnome is a wonderful thing,

  Two eyes and two elbows and two everything. …

  “Arthur’s back at Camelot,” said Nyneve. “He arrived the night before last from Cirencester. He didn’t sleep with Gwen. But then last night they were going to have a party for him.”

  “So he probably got boozed up and slept with her last night,” said Merlin. “Too bad, Nyneve. Isn’t it about time you forgot about him? You haven’t seen him for years.”

  “I’ll never forget about him.”

  “You’re twenty-one now. You’re a grown woman, Nyneve.”

  “You’ve been telling me I’m a grown woman ever since I was thirteen years old, Merlin, you dirty old bugger. Jesus! I wish you were a cold fish like Avalona.” Nyneve appealed to her stepmother. “Why is it that you have no emotions, Avalona, and yet Merlin’s … Well, you know what he’s like.”

  “I am a Dedo and Merlin is a Paragon.”

  “But you’re both Fingers of Starquin.”

  “I am a Finger. Merlin is a mutation. An error. A chance male. They have their uses.” She regarded Nyneve thoughtfully. “The time has come to make certain adjustments to you, in order to get a correct balance of ifalong possibilities.”

  “Stay away from me! I’m not so scared of you these days, Avalona!”

  “I realize that, which is why I am going to point out the advantages of what I am going to do. Up to now you have merely been my handmaiden. But as of today, you will be a Dedo like myself.”

  Nyneve felt her stomach knot up with horror. “But I don’t want to be a Dedo! I’m an ordinary girl and I want to stay that way!”

  “When you are a Dedo, you will not age by human standards. As the years go by, you will still look like a girl of twenty-one. Arthur, being a human male, will appreciate that.”

  “No!” Ny
neve was crying with terror. “Dedos have no feelings! You have no feelings! What’s the point of living if I can’t love Arthur?”

  “Listen to me, Nyneve. In less than one and a half millennia the human population of Earth will explode. Mara Zion will become a city as big as Cirencester. England will have hundreds of cities that size, and many others so big that you simply cannot imagine them. Humans will be everywhere, and forests like Mara Zion will be rare. In order for a Dedo to pass for a human, she will have to act like a human in every way.

  “She will need human emotions. She will possess all the Dedos’ other characteristics, such as our sense of duty, and if necessary, these will override her human traits. But in all other respects she will, in effect, be a human. She will think like a human and feel like a human.

  “An in human terms, she will be immortal. That is what the Dedo of the future will be. That is what I am offering you. There is a precedent. Morgan le Fay possesses such human emotions as suits her.”

  There was a long silence. “So I will still love Arthur?” said Nyneve at last.

  “For the rest of your life,” said Avalona.

  Nyneve walked; Avalona and Merlin rode the mule. They saw nobody as they made their way north through the forest twilight; no humans, no gnomes, no forest creatures. It’s just as though we have a whole happentrack to ourselves, thought Nyneve. She would not have put it past Avalona to arrange it that way, to make sure nothing went wrong on the journey.

  Night had fallen by the time they reached the forest edge. The looming breast of Pentor rose before them, silvered by the full moon. Nyneve regarded the moon intently and saw, faintly, another orb overlapping. They were on a different happentrack. There were no humans on this world, no animals, nothing animate that might divert them from their course of action by causing happentracks to branch. They were riding to Pentor and nothing could stop them.

  Avalona’s powers were immense and frightful, yet she looked like a little old lady perched ridiculously on the rump of a mule.

  And soon, thought Nyneve, I will have powers like hers. The realization shook her. She was quite certain she wouldn’t be able to handle it and that she would accidentally destroy the world, including Arthur and herself.

  They leaned into the slope and plodded upward. The mule drew close and Avalona turned toward Nyneve, a pale face against the darkness. “With the change comes the power to deal with the responsibility,” she said, anticipating Nyneve’s thoughts as usual. “That is the difference between you and Merlin. If you remember, the last time we visited the Rock, Merlin failed to fulfill his responsibility, and he left it unguarded. That is the kind of behavior you will learn to expect from a Paragon. You remember the story of Siang the Paragon and the Thing-he-did? He mated with an ape and the result was the human race. That tells you everything you need to know about Paragons.”

  They halted beneath the granite cliff of Pentor Rock and dismounted. Avalona said, “This time you will remain here, Merlin; otherwise I will be forced to assume you are totally useless and will have to dispose of you.”

  “Why are you talking to me like that? I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “But you may, Merlin. I have scanned the ifalong briefly and observed that on a measurable percentage of happen-tracks you will fall asleep. By threatening you I have reduced that percentage of happentracks to a more acceptable level. Keep standing, keep watching the Moon Rock, and if a facet starts to glow, you know what to do. Don’t you?”

  “Place my hand against the facet, accept the essence of the traveler, and send him on his way through the great-away,” recited the old Paragon sulkily. “And to my certain knowledge,” he added with weak defiance, “travelers use this Rock once every 3,265 years on average. So you’re making a big production out of nothing at all, Avalona.”

  “You hear the Paragonic attitude toward our Duty, Nyneve?” commented Avalona. “Now take my hand and stand close to me.”

  Avalona’s hand had a reptilian dryness, but that was not why Nyneve was shuddering. She’d been on this route before, many years ago when Avalona had taken her to meet Starquin the Five-in-One. It had been a disorienting, terrifying experience for a practical girl who liked to keep her feet on the ground. She watched while Avalona placed her free hand on that strange, warm part of the Pentor outcropping the locals called the Moon Rock, and she shuddered violently and wished she’d had the forethought to relieve herself before undertaking this outlandish journey.

  Then she was in the greataway.

  There was weightlessness, and there were stars beneath her feet and all around her. She and Avalona were encased in an invisible capsule, the wall of which felt like soft flesh. If she pushed herself away from this wall, she would soon reach the wall opposite. There was nothing to be afraid of, nothing. She was not going to fall into the stars that Avalona said were really suns, she was not going to throw up, she was not going to wet herself. Everything was under control. She’d done it before and she could do it again.

  Taking a deep breath, she scanned the greataway around her.

  There were stars, but there was Time, too, and there were Alternatives. She could sense them all, and they filled her with so much wonder that she forgot her physical entity and its limitations. She was a part of the greataway, and it was a part of her. Certain of Avalona’s words floated into her mind. When she’d first heard them, she’d confused them with religion, because she’d been young and inexperienced. Now she knew them as truth: “In the beginning there was only one happentrack. Multiple happentracks began when the first animal was wise enough to make the first decision.”

  It was a comforting thought. She was not at the mercy of the greataway. Instead, the greataway was at her mercy, and at the mercy of all creatures like her.

  Simple words came to her.

  She looked at the immensity and said, “I love you.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Avalona, her voice echoing oddly.

  “You really do, don’t you?”

  “We have little in common, you and I. But we do have this.”

  “I’m not frightened anymore.”

  “There is a stage of awareness when fear has no meaning. You have reached that stage, Nyneve.”

  “How long did it take me?”

  “1,295,498 Earth years. That’s fast by human standards. You have adapted well, and you are very suitable.”

  “Are you pleased?” And for once it was not a stupid question to ask a Dedo.

  “I am pleased,” said Avalona.

  “Have you found Starquin?”

  “We are traveling on his psetic line now.”

  “How long has it taken us?”

  “Two million years.”

  “But what about Earth?”

  “Earth is still as we left it. It will be the same when you get back.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Soon you will understand everything. Open your mind the way I taught you, Nyneve.”

  “Is he here?”

  “He is here.”

  It was like an old memory revived, as Starquin touched Nyneve for the second time.

  Then Starquin spoke. And as he spoke, Nyneve grew stronger, as though his words fed her body. Avalona was forgotten. Merlin and Arthur were forgotten. The ifalong was everything, and the ifalong was hers to shape.

  Aeons later, when she knew everything there was to know, Starquin said, “We are our consciousness. I have given you my consciousness. You are me, and one day you will save my life.”

  Nyneve turned and rode the invisible ship back, and a few million years earlier she arrived beside the Moon Rock.

  “Where’s Avalona?” asked Merlin, still awake.

  “In Starquin.”

  He thought about it. “Thank God for that,” he said at last. “So it’s just you and I, Nyneve?”

  As he moved closer she said, “Avalona is in me too.”

  16

  THE LAST GREAT BATTLE

  FIFTEEN YEARS PAS
SED.

  One misty autumn evening there was a knock at the cottage door. Nyneve was engrossed in the far-off ifalong and didn’t hear, but Merlin opened an eye. “Come in,” he croaked. They never bolted the door these days. Nyneve was well able to defend both herself and Merlin against intruders.

  “Arthur!” exclaimed Merlin as the tall figure entered.

  The years had treated the king well. He’d filled out physically and gained an indefinable dignity. He possessed, Merlin had to admit, a kingly bearing despite his obvious tiredness.

  Nyneve stirred and stretched, yawning. Her breasts rose beneath the cream fabric of her shift. Arthur watched her in sad appreciation.

  “By God, you don’t get any less pretty, Nyneve. You don’t look a day older than when I first met you.”

  Her eyes snapped open. “Arthur, it’s you!”

  He smiled. “Didn’t you expect me? I thought you could foretell the ifalong.”

  She flushed. “I don’t spy on people, Arthur. Nothing is so important that I have to keep an eye on everybody’s movements.”

  “Avalona thought it was,” said Merlin. “She spent days anticipating everything. She said you never know when a happentrack might branch. She was a clever Dedo, Avalona was.”

  “It so happens I don’t see things the same way,” said Nyneve. “I believe a lot of happentracks tend to average out. So I didn’t know you were coming, Arthur. It’s a pleasure to see you. What brings you here?”

  He sat down, glanced at her, then away. “Tomorrow I ride for Camlann. The Saxons are massing there. We’ve suffered a lot of defeats lately, Nyneve. The old days seem a long time ago. Everything is falling apart, and we lost half the country last year. Most of the original Round Table knights are dead: Torre, Pellinore, Gawaine. …”

  “I’d heard. I’m sorry.”

  “What was it all for?” His eyes looked tired. She hadn’t seen him for two years, and she noticed new lines on his face; the vertical lines that come from tension and defeat. “I thought we were going to change the world with the Round Table and our principles of chivalry. Everything was so new and so right, and so good when we started out. And yet the more victories we won, the more we seemed to lose. People simply wouldn’t see sense.” The frustration was twisting in him like a rage. “Why not? We were right. Everybody knew that. Your stories proved that; we heard them wherever we went. People loved them. But they didn’t love us. They fought us every inch of the way, and once we were out of sight they would return to their old ways: up with the gentry, down with the peasants, bring out the instruments of torture. Why?”