The Nonborn King

by Julian May

  "After the sacred zapper is repaired, we are virtuady home free! Abaddon has studied what Felice did at Gibraltar, and he's also analyzed the potential of the metaconcert we'll be putting together. Felice's creativity checks in at something he cads the six-hundredth order of magnitude. Very heavy. But if we hit Felice with a photon cannon in addition to the metaconcert blast, we should pull the equivalent of six-thirty—and the monster dies, zapped to a flaky Hinder.

  "So we're off. And we're going to win! You have the Shining One's guarantee!"

  They had been cautioned against uttering even the most discreet response. But the aether fizzed with jubilation, nevertheless, as the pneumatic boats cast off and sped up the Genil at more than 20 kph. No sooner had the journey begun than the 3550 combatants were put to work, assembling their minds into the three-pronged metaconcert that would shortly serve as both weapon and buckler for King Aiken-Lugonn.

  ***

  The three human operants from North America began the process, sorting and interleaving the minds, one by one. Owen Blanchard took the coercers, who were headed by Alberonn Mindeater, Artigonn of Amalizan, and Condateyr of Roniah. Cloud Remillard coordinated the psychokinetics under Bleyn the champion, Neyal of Sasaran, Diarmet of Geroniah, and Kuhal Earthshaker (the latter only a proforma participant). The all-important creative faction was marshalled by Elaby Gathen, working with Mercy, Aluteyn Craftsmaster, Celadeyr, Lomnovel Brainburner, and Thufan Thunderhead. The High Table members were entrusted with refinement of the substructures in each syntagmatic chain, binding together the lesser minds into coherent units that would be—thanks to the new sophisticated armature furnished by Abaddon—greater in power than the sum of their component parts.

  Once the newborn Tanu metaconcert had stabilized and assumed a proper condition of dynamic potential, Marc Remillard took it up, smoothed the rough spots, and phased in the operant minds under his personal control: the surviving rebels in Ocala, together with their runaway adult children (now simmering but submissive), who were situated in a bivouac on the Moroccan coast about 900 kilometers southwest of Mulhacén. To this combination Marc added his own awesome creative faculty, boosted by auxiliary cerebroenergetics. The whole was then subtly cleft into offensive and defensive capabilities, with the former relying more heavily upon the creative powers and the latter weighing more on the coercers. The defensive aspect of this Organic Mind Marc kept under his own control. His farsense, in a virtuoso maneuver that neither Aiken nor the Tanu could fathom, somehow maintained its independent monitoring function. Aiken, as prime executive of the Mind, could watch out for the enemy himself; but if he became distracted, or if Felice contrived some outrageously subtle ploy, the cold farseeing eye in North America would be watching and ready to sound the alert.

  Plugged in last of all, poised between Marc and the director's slot, with its soul-substance attenuated and drawn into a virtual cylinder of enormous bore, was the mind of Culluket the Interrogator. He was completely passive (but aware), a living conduit through which psychoenergies might pass in only one direction: outward. If Felice tried to penetrate the Mind with her own forces, or if she attempted to choke off the output, instigating feedback, the sentient safety fuse would disrupt. Culluket would die. (And he thought' That would be the easiest! But at the same time came the nagging voice of prescience, admonishing: Not until you pay the account in full.)

  When the Mind was finally ready, the faceless entity called Abaddon presented it to Aiken Drum.

  "All you need do is slip your own mind into the ultimate position: prime focus and executive director. If you're quite sure you're up to it ..."

  The waiting mental edifice seemed to shimmer before Aiken's bemused eye. How splendid! How strong! How huge! True, the program was Abaddon's, as well as the expertise in the assembly. But it was Aiken Drum who now took up the organism boldly and wore it—he who was in control.

  The sky he saw now through the defensive barrier was almost purple. The solar disk shone vermilion with a white-hot core. As the lead boat he rode in hurtled up the river, the rushing walls of jungle were a green so intense that it verged on black. The Genil itself, still carpeted in mist, was a twisting track of molten gold unwinding endlessly.

  If you're quite sure you're up to it ...

  Was he!

  He let the godlike offensive potential fill him, let himself expand with it, savoring the biddable menace. He was Mercy, he was Aluteyn, he was Alberonn and Bleyn. He was Owen Blanchard, Grand Master Coercer. He was Cloud and Elaby, raw and youthful and operant. He was more than 3000 Tanu minds, synchronized in unprecedented union. He was 40 veteran villains of the Metapsychic Rebellion and 28 of their adult offspring. He was Marc Remillard, challenger of a galaxy, locked in refrigerated armor with charged needles piercing his incandescent brain.

  He was ad of them! And himself! He was King.

  ***

  She was sure, so sure that he would be there in Goriah, but when she circled the Castle of Glass, calling his name, he did not answer, nor was he anywhere to be found in the surrounding city or in its satellite plantations and settlements. She would now recognize his aura, no matter where he hid. But he was not there.

  Baffled, the black bird flew southward, following the Atlantic coastline to Rocilan. But he was not in the Candy City either, nor in Sasaran far up the Garonne, that mighty river caded Baar by the Tanu. She scanned Amalizan, the citadel guarding the principal gold mines of the Many-Colored Land, and then winged tirelessly on to Sayzorask on the lower Rhône and Darask in the Provençal Everglades.

  Beloved! Culluket!

  Again and again the raven caded, but it seemed he was not in any of the French cities. His aura, so glacial and hard, the color of frozen blood, would be readily discernible now that her farsenses had been sharpened as a result of the redaction. If she flew to within a dozen kilometers of the Interrogator, she would know him.

  She rested and broke her long fast in a verdant parkland west of the great lake, subduing a newborn antelope fawn and feeding upon its tongue. Refreshed, she mounted into the air again and called out in playful derision as she passed Black Crag. She expected no answer from Elizabeth and received none.

  Elizabeth will be useful again some day, the raven thought. But I really don't need her help to find Cull. It'll be more fun to search for him myself!

  She flew south at gale speed, streaking over the flowering jungles of the Corbière Hills and through a pass of the eastern Pyrénées. The Beloved was not in Geroniah, nor in Tarasiah; so she angled far inland and crossed the Catalan Wilderness and came betimes to the head of the Iberian Grand Canyon, where Aluteyn Craftsmaster's lonely citadel of Calamosk perched above the rushing torrent. Culluket was not there. Indeed, the city was almost deserted.

  She considered. Hadn't the other places she had visited also been strangely emptied of life-aura—especially of Tanu life? Where had all the exotics gone?

  The limitless plains of the south were going from emerald to lemon-yellow, now that the rains were two months in the past. Only the swales and the arroyos remained lush, and the bottomlands along great rivers such as the Proto-Jucar, which flowed past Afaliah.

  Culluket! Culluket!

  But again the Beloved was not there, and neither was the city-lord, Celadeyr, nor his cadre of battle-companions. The mystery deepened. Perhaps Aiken Drum had gone off on a Quest against the Firvulag marauders of the western Alps. Felice had not searched the cities of the upper Rhône but had flown straight from Hidden Springs to Goriah, where she had expected to find her quarry cowering in the protection of Aiken Drum. But if the King had mounted some punitive expedition ...

  It was a bore, deciding what to do. If she was to keep her search methodical, she should by rights skew across the Mediterranean and take up the hunt at dismal Var-Mesk, then go up to Bardelask and Roniah. But the afternoon was lengthening and her precipitous pace had begun to sap her strength.

  She thought: I'll go home to Mulhacén, and start again tomorrow. />
  Her heart lifted along with her raven's body as she soared up on a thermal, then arrowed southwest toward the Betic Cordillera. Home to her mountain, her treasure, her dear animal companions.

  She thought: I could keep him in there, chained in gold. Encased in gold. Pervaded with gold! Yes! Ad through the muscles, a precious network of conductive metal, and golden external terminals to each major neural plexus! The brain itself would need a very special divarication, which he would have to help her build. What a delicious prospect! With him thus equipped, she would be able to play him like some magnificent algetic instrument, first warming his sanguine frigidity with simple capriccios and inventions, then going on to immense panharmonies, dithyrambs of pleasure and pain.

  Oh, Beloved! Before it was my joy to receive, and that was sick and unsane, wasn't it? But now I am well and ready for the joy of giving and contemplation relished by ad sane minds—even those who would like to reject it, indignant and disgusted at its dark enigma. But we know, don't we, Beloved, that the sight of the suffering Other only confirms our own power and pain-freedom, sealing our sense of worth. We triumph as we are spared. We are gratified by a price paid but not by us.

  (And did she not suffer and die for me, Crucifixa etiam pro nobis, as her foolish God did for her?)

  You, too, will suffer gloriously, Beloved, but not die. I love you too much ever to let you die.

  ***

  Aiken came to Felice's cave as a new-hatched spider riding on a strand of gossamer, one of hundreds that the afternoon's thermal wind blew up the northern flank of the mountain. When his glistening thread tangled in a pine tree, he made his way down to a branch and rested there, carefully thinking arachnoid thoughts just in case Abaddon's earlier scan had missed the monster. Using the shortest possible soft-focus farsight, the spiderling scanned the cave ambit. Felice wasn't hiding among the green-framed boulders, or down in the canyon, or anywhere on the upper slopes where the alpine flowers bloomed in pink and white tufts. His deep-vision, exerted more forcefully, assured him that she wasn't concealed inside Mulhacén—at least, not within a kilometer or so of the cave.

  The tiny spider descended from the tree and turned into a man in a golden suit He lowered the metapsychic shield until it was closely cupped about the cave entrance. Then, from the large pocket on his back, he took a titiridion net which he spread on the ground. With his face shining, he entered the cave and penetrated to the inner room, sliding aside the protective rock slab as though it were a paper screen.

  The radiance streaming from him lit a pile of golden tores higher than his head. How many had the mad scavenger gleaned? It seemed there were thousands, each necklet a hollow shell filled with components from Gomnol's demolished factory in Muriah. There remained small stockpiles of the psychic amplifiers in each Tanu city; but none could compare with this cache of Felice's.

  He sent quantities of the tores flying out of the cave to pile up on the net, and at length uncovered the Spear of Lugonn and its pack.

  "At last!" he muttered, taking up the weapon. He had last worn it in the Duel of Battlemasters against Nodonn. When the tores had all been removed from the inner chamber he strolled back outside the cave, the Spear over his shoulder, and stood staring at the heaped-up treasure.

  Finally he gestured, and the net gathered into a purse that encompassed the golden tores. All that remained was to fly back to the waiting army, parcel out the spoils, and flee. Felice might never know who had robbed her ...

  But he couldn't leave it at that.

  He sprang into the air, lifting the enormous bundle, and carried it a couple of kilometers northward along the ridge connecting Mulhacén with its sister peak, Alcazaba. Leaving the tores and the Spear, he flew back, enclosed in the bubble of defensive force maintained by Abaddon, and hovered over the vicinity of the cave. He said:

  Kill the screen! Go to the offensive mode! I have to leave my royal calling card!

  The sun brightened for him and the air regained its dazzle. His mind seemed to swell, totipotent, as the entire offensive sum of the metaconcert flowed into his creative reservoir and approached focus. (Throttle back, Exalted Laddie! No sense leveling the whole bloody place, you know. Might attract her notice, wherever she is. And the energy level is a wee bit scary, now that you experience the totality for the first time! So back off a tad. Give her the finger, the heraldic digitus impudicus, and let go.)

  Let go!

  He laughed like Jove as the psychic bolt flew and thunder boomed. A huge chunk of the mountain split away, fragmented, and rumbled down into the secret crevice where the raven-girl had dwelt Most of the sound waves had been reflected skyward by the shape of the terrain. There was little dust no smoke. But Felice's lair was gone.

  The creative blast had burned as it traveled through him and he faltered in midair, engulfed in pain, willing Abaddon to restructure the shield as he pulled himself back together. Even mitigated, the energy of the metaconcert had nearly vaporized his brain plasm.

  Marc Marc what do wrong God help!

  Amateur blockhead! You used wrong channels [images] harmless at lowlevel zap greatdanger at high. Even Felice knew better than use that puny creativemode ...

  Yeahyeahyeah. Just give fix. Pain.

  Overload kill you just as dead as feedback or allsystem zorch! I took too much for granted

  Godsake save schoolteacher act + fuckingduncecap for owndamnkids show RIGHT WAY channelize megazap.

  Suppressed expletives. [Profoundly esoteric image.] You got that Royal Highness?

  Uh. Say again?

  King Aiken-Lugonn take your loot and get back to the others. I'll finish the lesson as you retreat. And I hope to hell you're a quick study.

  ***

  The rainbow-colored knights on their chargers fled across the Granadine savanna, the great claws of the mounts slicing the dry turf and uprooting buttercups and purple scabious and eyebright. The tumult of the Tanu army's passing scattered herds of gazedes and hipparions. Sabertooth cats started up from their naps and roared in alarm, and great bustards flapped off on low trajectories from their violated nests among the tussocks. The sun was now low in the west and broiling hot. Dust devils traded in the wake of the retreating force, wavering like tall tan spectres above the dim gleam of the defensive canopy.

  The riders did not guide their steeds. Their minds were utterly rapt in the task of maintaining their share of the metaconcert; and though their eyes saw and their ears heard and they were conscious of the heat and the smell of dust and ripped meadow herbiage, they had no volition, no sense of independent being. Each brain functioned as a ced of the Organic Mind, exuding psychoenergy in the erection of the great shield, holding still more energy in reserve, ready for the offensive thrust they might be caded upon at any moment to deliver.

  King Aiken-Lugonn galloped at the head of the horde, leading his people back to the navigable stretch of the Rio Genil. Behind his saddle, and behind that of each other rider as well, was a sack full of golden tores that rang with every step his chaliko took. In his arms he held a golden-glass lance with a cable connecting its butt to a power-module slung from a sturdy shoulder harness. The readout on the module showed no charge, and the five colored studs set into its armrest were fouled with salt, as was its needle-thin aperture. At the moment, the Spear of Lugonn was dead, inoperative. But technicians were waiting at the river with tools that would bring it back to life, and the diminutive form of the King glowed in anticipation of using it once again. This weapon would conquer Felice, then rout the Firvulag. And at the end it would complete the task that the Flood had interrupted: It would kill Nodonn.

  ***

  Still clothed in her raven's guise, her mind perfectly screened, Felice arrived at her lair on Mulhacén. She hovered, incredulous, at the sight of the stupendous rockslide, the glittering blocks of micaschist larger than houses that had been sheared off the face of the mountain and tumbled into the nook that had been her home. The trees were gone, the flowering shrubs, the water
fall with its fern-bordered pool for bathing, the firepit and the quaintly wrought rustic furniture that had been just outside the cavern, the mossy boulders where the rock thrushes had perched and sung for her in the evening's hush. Gone. The small branch of the river where the fat trout swam was buried under tons of debris, as was the game-trail that had brought the animal friends to her door. The only living thing left to greet her was the lynx, Pseudaelurus, which sat on the flat crest of an isolated crag, basking in the last of the dying sunlight.

  The raven spiraled down, crying. At first, she believed the catastrophe to be natural; but then she saw a dusty golden tore half-buried in the detritus, and she thought to exert her powerful deep-seeing eye, scanning the barricaded interior of her talus cave. She discovered that the treasure chamber had been emptied.

  "Culluket!" she screamed. The sound echoed into the dizzying gorge cut by the young Genii. The lynx cringed, its ears flattened. "Culluket—you and Aiken Drum!" The lynx vanished into rocky chaos and the dark-feathered bird descended onto the vacant crag and was transformed.

  A fantastic being stood on the rock, dressed in gleaming black cuir bouilli, the hoplite armor of Felice's old profession much modified by her mind's vagary. Now the angles of the carapace were sharper, the contours more cruel. The old open greaves and short gauntlets had expanded to enclose all the flesh of the legs and arms, and now were adorned with curved spurs and excrescences like talons. The helmet had a predatory beak, balanced by a spiny crest projecting to the rear. From its T-shaped opening shone two beams of light, white as magnesium flares. When the being turned its head and began to survey the Granadine steppe north of the mountain, the eye-beams drilled through an intervening ridge of metamorphic rock like lasers punching a wedge of cheese. Felice searched the valley of the lower Genii through smoking peepholes, located her prey at long last, and took off after it like a vengeful comet.

  ***

  The boats were tearing down the river. Aiken, in the primary repair craft, was using his deep-vision to guide the technicians in reaming out the barrel of the Spear when Marc's abrupt warning came: