by Julian May
Know, Highnesses, that Greg-Donnet has declared that we must go forth from this hazardous dwelling place into lands free from radioactive contamination. We have resolved, therefore, to quit our domain here in Meadow Mountain just as soon as the rains abate, and to present ourselves to you in High Vrazel—loyal subjects prepared to occupy such demesnes as it may please you to grant us for resettlement.
Know further that Greg-Donnet advises that our pool of damaged genes must be reconstituted with an influx of normal Firvulag germ plasm, this to be an adjunct of the more difficult genetic engineering operations, which must await the training of skilled technicians. To this view, our people avow to you that they hereby renounce the old antagonism that precluded social and sexual intercourse between us and our normal brothers and sisters.
At this year's Grand Loving of Firvulag, I intend to lead forth in the mating rituals a contingent of winsome virgins from our most distinguished families, who will take husbands in the traditional manner from the ranks of your stalwart lads. The damsels will, of course, be adorned with the most alluring of illusory bodies, and they will come lavishly dowered with Meadow Mountain's considerable material substance. As a further expression of our affection, gratitude, and good-will, and so that all Little People may share with us our joy at reunion with long-separated kinfolk, we are prepared to underwrite the entire expense of this year's Grand Loving of Firvulag.
Expect us at High Vrazel about two weeks after the spring equinox. At that time you will doubtless have selected a suitable site for our habitation, as well as given thought to the matter of interim fosterage of the brides with the families of suitable bridegrooms-elect.
I am, ever at your service, Highnesses, SUGOLL.
***
"I call that nerve!" exclaimed Sharn, fetching his writing-desk a smash with one massive fist. Sealing wax and account books and memo-plaques and a twenty-second-century voicewriter and the King's favorite goblet (the one made from Lord Velteyn's skull) went dancing over the polished oak planks. "Call in that Howler courier, dammit! I'll give him a return reply that'll zorch that misbegotten Sugoll from his stinking deformed toenails to his horny crested occiput! Move in on us, will he? And with a sex-mad mob of monster brides I'm to foist off on our people at the Loving? Ten thousand tumbling turds!"
"But he sounds rich," Afya remarked meditatively. Sitting at her own desk adjacent to that of her husband, she nibbled the end of a silver Parker pen with delicate pointed teeth.
The royal study deep inside Grand Ballon Mountain in the fogbound Vosges was cosy and bright, warmed by a big brass brazier that glowed within a free-standing ceramic stove shaped like a hollow turnip. A sideboard still held remains of the royal lunch, taken today in camera. The walls were hung with a judicious selection of captured banners and Tanu weaponry, spoils of the last Combat. Fat candles that incorporated three wicks in each waxy barrel illuminated the twin desks.
"That shambling bastard won't get away with taking me for granted," Sharn snarled. "Does he think he's dealing with a caretaker monarch like poor old Yeochee?"
"We are the monarch," said the handsome ogress with the apricot-colored hair. "And I find Sugoll's letter intriguing." She retrieved the piece of vellum with her psychokinesis from where Sharn had flung it to the floor. "Resettlement. H'mm."
"There's no room for them here in High Vrazel. There must be seven, eight hundred monsters up on Meadow Mountain! We'll have to try to divert them down to Famorel, in the Alps. Or maybe to the Grotto Wilderness, or even Koneyn. Té on a tightrope! As if we don't have enough trouble keeping the hinterlanders in line. Now we'll get a fresh batch of headstrong types who'll want to do things their own way, and never mind how it screws up my royal strategy!"
"Nionel." Queen Ayfa smiled at the letter. "That's where they must go."
Sharn's great mouth snapped shut, aborting another tirade. His brows hoisted. His mind sent a gout of joyous appreciation splattering over his wife's psyche. She smiled indulgently. He bellowed, "Nionel! Of course! Refurbishing and staffing the place will keep those Howlers gainfully employed for years. We can have the Loving there in May, and then later on, this fall—'"
"The new Games. On our own Field of Gold at last."
They embraced mentally, savoring the delicious suitability of it. Sugoll and his horde, undoubtedly wealthy, would be an asset to the Firvulag if they could be persuaded to repopulate and restore the ghost city of Nionel in the western wilderness, near the Paris Basin. Within Nionel's ambit lay the ritual battleground of the Little People, which had been virtually abandoned during the forty years that the Tanu had dominated the annual Grand Combat.
"It's the only logical place to hold this year's Games," Sharn said. "Even if that treacherous little torcless cockerel did steal victory from us at the last minute, there's no way he can prepare a suitable Tanu fighting ground this year. And the White Silver Plain is under fifty-five meters of salt water."
"If we couch the offer diplomatically, I think Aiken will agree. And there's your idea for donating a new trophy in place of the lost Sword to sweeten the deal ... Oh, yes. This is all going to work out splendidly!"
"There's still one dead mouse in the skilligalee, Ayfe. The damned brides."
Ayfa considered. "They might be presentable. If their shape-shifting powers are sufficiently strong. And they'll have the doweries. Besides—how many of them can there be? Probably only twenty or thirty, given the size of the Howler gathering that the Lowlife Guderian reported to Fitharn. Surely we have that many families who'd be eager to get off our shit-list by making marriages of convenience."
"Yes," he mused. "It could be worked out It'll have to be. We really can't afford to antagonize this upstart Sugoll, you know. Aside from staving off civil war, we mustn't forget that he's the one who knows the route to the Ship's Grave. One of these days, that information might be extremely useful."
***
FROM SHARN AND AYFA, High King and High Queen of the Many-Colored Land.
TO SUGOLL, Lord of Meadow Mountain, our Beloved and Loyal Vassal: GREETINGS.
It was with pleasure as well as sympathy that we received your letter informing us of your recent marriage and your hopes for assuaging your genetic disability.
Come ahead to High Vrazel, and welcome! We do indeed have in mind an ideal new home for you and your people, which we will describe fully upon your arrival here.
You do us great honor by offering your doubtless charming daughters as brides-elect in the Grand Loving ceremonies. This matter, also, will be taken up in detail upon your arrival.
Convey our heartfelt hopes for happiness and reproductive satisfaction to the eager damsels. To your people we send our affection and assurance of continuing concern; and to you and your illustrious Spouse, the Lady Katlinel, our royal benison and the enclosed tokens of esteem, which might prove useful on your journey should you encounter any of the pestilential hyenas or amphicyons that unfortunately infest the regions west of the Rhine. Read the directions carefully before using.
We call your attention to the simplified mode of royal address that we have adopted.
AYFA, HIGH QUEEN SHARN-MES, HIGH KING
Encl: 3 Solar-Powered
Stun-Guns,
Husqvarna
Mark VI-G
***
With the satisfactory response from the Firvulag throne in hand, Sugoll set in motion the monster ingathering; for Sharn and Ayfa were mistaken in their belief that only mutants from the Feldberg area would be coming to High Vrazel. Many other concentrations of Howlers, who had drifted away from the radioactive caves of the heartland over a period of centuries, had learned about the hopeful genetic prognosis of Greg-Donnet—and they were determined to share in it.
Bundling up their portable wealth, pathetic and hideous creatures forsook hamlets deep in Fennoscandia, trekking southward through the Amber Lakes where the winter nights were long and warm under perpetually cloudy skies. Other throngs of Howlers converged on Meadow Mountai
n from the haunted Swabian and Franconian Alb, and from the mineral-rich highlands of the Erzegebirge and far Bohemia. These latter brought with them quantities of jewels and precious metals, which they were accustomed to mine sheerly for the sake of their beauty, using them to decorate their twisted bodies in ironic splendor. Mutants from the Hercynian Forest west of the Rhine, mosdy solitary and poverty-stricken, responded to Sugoll's invitation as best they could. They made their painful way through the Vosges and the Schwarzwald to the subterranean villages of the Feldberg, where compassionate Katlinel housed them in the dry upper caves, fattened them up, and provided them with fine new clothes. All of the able-bodied were put to work budding boats or preparing supplies, in anticipation of the time when the meteors announced the advent of Pliocene spring.
Finally the star-showers fed, the rains ended, and the underground rivers beneath the Feldberg dropped to navigable levels. Everything was in readiness. The great Howler Migration commenced.
Ten days after the equinox, rank after rank of mutants, all well dressed and bearing whatever treasure they possessed, marched to the awesome borehole called Alliky's Shaft. Following a brief invocation to Téah by Sugoll, the lift machinery began to creak and the big buckets descended with parties of torch-bearing travelers: males and females, hermaphrodites and neuters, children and old folks, the diabolically misshapen and the quasi-normal—Howlers all, singing an ululating farewell that floated up out of the depths like some chorus of the damned.
Disembarking at the lowest level of Meadow Mountain's mineworkings, they tramped past heaps of garnets, yellow and pink beryls, and green tourmaline crystals that lay about in neglected profusion. The people then formed into single file and descended still deeper into the granite bowels of the Feldberg, along natural crevices in living rock where the torches smoked in the chilly damp and tinkling water-drips punctuated the eerie Howler song.
At last they came to a great underground chamber. Tubs of flaming oil blazed all along a newly constructed quay on the shore of a lake as black as a sheet of onyx. Here was massed an enormous flotilla of sturdy punts, manned by monstrous boatmen equipped with poles. Still holding their firebrands high and singing, the people climbed on board. With Sugoll's ornate craft leading the way, the boats glided off one by one until a torchlit train extended over the water as far as the eye could see, heading into impenetrable darkness.
It was a journey that few Howlers had ever made before. Beneath the Feldberg's mass were uncounted Water Gives with springs and dark cascades and streamlets and siphons in bewildering complexity. The upper levels were well explored, as were the underground tributaries to the Paradise and Ystroll Rivers; but only a few hardy adventurers had ever dared to cross the Black Lake, and these were long dead, leaving only half-remembered tales of what lay ahead.
Katlinel's farsight, limited underground, was their sole means of navigation. The boats entered a natural tunnel, wide but with a low ceiling. The torches struck wavering gleams from wet mineral formations. The singing echoed and reechoed off the walls until the people finally fell silent in confusion and dismay. Then Katlinel, to divert them, opened her mind and told stories of the Tanu world and that of the normal Firvulag, climaxing with the momentous events of the last Grand Combat and the Flood, which she had learned of from the farspeech of surviving members of her Creator Guild.
After five hours the fleet halted at a suitable place for the people to rest and eat. Then the journey resumed with a fresh crew of boatmen, and Lord Greg-Donnet took over as chief entertainer, lecturing telepathically for hour after hour on the mutagenic effects of hard radiation and on bioengineering techniques for repairing damaged chromosomes. The torches guttered out one by one, passengers in the boats fell into a doze, and presently the only sounds were the swish and thump of punt poles, the splashing of water, and muffled whimpers from the sleeping children.
More hours passed. Sugoll and Katlinel sat side by side in the bow of the leading boat while Greg-Donnet snoozed on a pile of leather cushions behind them. The Lord and Lady of the Misbegotten shared their hopes and fears on the intimate thought-mode, giving comfort to each other and even laughing over the surprise that awaited King Sharn and Queen Ayfa. The monster ingathering had swelled the Howler number prodigiously, until at the end, instead of the original 700 or so denizens of Meadow Mountain, the emigrants totaled nearly 9000. Of these, 1256 were virgins of marriageable age.
***
About fifteen hours after leaving the Black Lake, the wakeful travelers were conscious of moving air that carried scents of humus and green growing things rather than sterile wet rock. Sleepers stirred and came alert. The children began to chatter and whisper. Interrogative howls passed from one boat to another, up the line and down. Finally, Katlinel's farsight was able to confirm that they were, indeed, approaching the river's outlet.
Ahead shone a wan glimmer. The boatmen leaned to their poles, propelling the craft as swiftly as they could around one last lengthy curve. A thin screen of boughs hung over the cave's mouth. Katlinel stood up, fingers pressed to the golden tore at her throat and pruned the ramage away with an invisible blade of psychoenergy. Severed branches tumbled harmlessly into the water and the boats drifted into open air. They emerged from the base of a great forested cliff into a land silvered by the moon. Steppes clothed with rippling grass stretched away on either hand. Near the river were groves of majestic flabellaria fan palms and weeping willows.
The Howler people in the crowded punts began to shape-shift spontaneously, as if eager to mask their deformities now that they had finally left the caves. The horned and crested horror who had sat beside Katlinel from the journey's beginning now metamorphosed into a tall humanoid as handsome as any Tanu, wearing a jewel-studded hunter's jerkin and a peaked cap surmounted by a small coronet.
Sugoll asked his wife, "Now that we are beyond the dense rock formations, is your farsense able to trace the course of this river to its confluence?"
She exerted her metafaculty, ranging southward for a few score kilometers. "Yes, I see it There's a truly enormous river down there. It comes from the east from a great lake in the Helvetides. Not far from its confluence with this stream, it makes a right-angle curve and flows northward." She showed the mental picture to Greg-Donnet.
"Oh, it's the Rhine, all right" said Crazy Greggy cheerily. "Just as we hoped. All we have to do now is float on down to the landing at the High Vrazel trailhead—and then on to Nibelheim itself!"
"How long do you think it will take us to reach the landing?" Sugoll asked Katlinel.
She concentrated. "Less than a day. The river flows swiftly with the spring runoff from the Alps. We could camp here for the rest of the night, then continue in the morning. These meadowlands should be reasonably safe from predatory animals, and I detect no sentient life whatsoever."
"If anything comes sniffing around," Greggy said fiercely, "we can give it a blast from those presents that Sharn and Ayfa sent Wherever do you suppose they got such contraband? Of course, it was an open secret that time-travelers did smuggle in forbidden armaments and other goodies—but we privileged humans assumed that the Tanu destroyed them. What fascinating food for speculation!" He began to giggle. "How I'd love to zap me a hoe-tusker! Bring ten tons of gubbertushed elephant crashing at my feet!" Wistfully, he appended, "In Muriah, I never ever got to go on Hunts. The Tanu said I was too valuable."
"And so you are, Greggy." Sugoll had been issuing telepathic commands, directing the boats to shore. Now he smiled down on the dapper little geneticist "You are valuable to us as well. I'll see that you get to stalk some big game at a suitable time. But you must promise not to go haring off on your own. Losing you would be a catastrophe."
The elderly man was quick with reassurances. He glanced around at the grounding punts and the passengers disembarking in the moonlight. "I think you all look perfectly splendid in your illusory bodies! And you and Katy make a wonderful couple, Sugoll."
The Howler lord's brow creased slight
ly. "You can discern no shadow of our true monstrous shapes?"
"Not a trace! Not a—a debilissima!"
"Let us hope," Sugoll said, "that our disguises prove as impenetrable to the Firvulag royalty. And to the bridegrooms at the Grand Loving."
***
"Nine thousand?" Sharn croaked brokenly. "O Goddess."
"The riverguards counted 'em twice, Appalling One," said Fitharn. "There seem to be well over a thousand virgins, too. All shiny red boots and flower garlands with ribbons, and so stiff with opals and sapphires and rubies that they can barely stagger."
"But how do they look?" Ayfa inquired grimly.
Fitharn paused. He pursed his lips, screwed up his eyes, scratched one ear, and resettled his conical hat. Silence grew.
"Well?" demanded the royal ogress. "Can you tell?"
"In a dark bedroom, Majesty, if one were very horny—"
Sharn groaned. "That bad?"
"Their shiftings are ingenious and attractive, Appalling Ones, but I'm afraid they wouldn't deceive a true Firvulag for a gnat's eyeblink."
"We can't risk having an official reception for them here in the Hall," Ayfa decided. "There'd be a riot."
"At the least," the King sighed.
"If you want my advice," Fitharn said, "head 'em off before they ever get to High Vrazel. Meet 'em on the trail with a slap-up picnic feast, plenty of musicians and liquor, and a welcoming committee of trustworthy nobles and their ladies, primed to be tactful. (Don't ask any with eligible sons, of course.) Give this pack of monsters what my old friend Chief Burke would call a schmooze-job! Chat 'em up. Tell 'em you want to save an inconvenient side trip to High Vrazel—where all the palace jakes are on the blink! After all, they'll have far enough to go, marching to Nionel through the Belfort Gap."