The Nonborn King

by Julian May

  "And is it true that you wept over my silver-and-emerald helmet?" The taint of her mockery was elusive.

  The little man turned away. "Oh, yes," he admitted. "All the way back to Goriah, as I lay in my cabin coddling my combustion-chamber skull, I kept the thing with me. My last memento of you. Still full of your perfume in spite of its dunking in the Rio Genil! You bet I cried, babe. Even though I knew you were alive."

  "Ah."

  "I didn't think you'd leave him. It was his idea, wasn't it?"

  Down on the beach, there was a shout from many voices and a telepathic affirmation: Lie! Up she goes! The Tanu nobles Still in the pavilion rushed outside for a better view as the scarlet warrior kite rose slowly into the shimmering sky, its human cargo dangling like a spindly tad. A moment later the blue-wave kite climbed aloft. Yosh's farspoken voice said to the King:

  Anytime you're ready, boss!

  Aiken's mind and voice commanded: "Begin." The great kites seemed to bow to each other and then swoop in for the initial engagement. Sliver naginata flashed in the sun. The ground crews hauled the wrist-thick flying cables this way and that and the winch operators took in slack.

  Aiken squinted into the glare, gauging the wind. He said to Mercy, "You're supposed to stay close to me and report to him, I suppose. There's no other way he could get through the stacked screens I'm using."

  She sat back among the cushions, inaccessible, her auburn hair rich on her golden-tan shoulders, glowing in contrast to her jade-colored gown. "I'm here to stay with you as long as you want me. Do you? Or shall I go?"

  The blue kite, hovering a dozen meters above the scarlet, dived abruptly. Sunlight caught Yosh's slashing blow that severed one of Vilkas's maneuvering lines. The red kite retreated as line was paid out.

  "You're afraid of me again," Aiken said. "It's made you burn! You won't go. You're wild for me, as you were after the golden maypole dance! I give you more than he ever can. I love you more than he does. Admit it!"

  The scarlet kite bobbed up and down like a crazy pendulum, swinging as it tried to avoid the darting thrusts of the blue attacker. Vilkas managed to cut a few of the central bridle lines, but this had bttle effect on Yosh's kite. The Japanese concentrated solely on the right side of his antagonist's kite, cutting bridles and slicing great vertical rents in the paper until the painted samurai warrior's face was ab but obbterated in ribboning shreds. The red kite sank low in spite of the frantic hauling of its crew, and Vilkas's dangling feet nearly brushed the scraggly trees growing on the top of a large dune.

  Aiken's mouth was set in a tight smile. He did not look at Mercy, but her face was overwhelming in his mind, and she knew. He said, "Nodonn's gathering his adherents down in Afabah right now, isn't he! Sending out a cab for ab the reactionaries and hotheads and human-haters to rally round the old sun-face blazon. How many knights do you think he'll finally muster? A few hundred, maybe? And how many first-class powers? Himself, Celo, his brother Kuhal if he ever gets his head put back together, maybe that old asshole from Tarasiah, Thufan Thunderfart. Does he really think he's got a chance of licking me with that lot? ... Or is he planning to show up at the Grand Tourney with the Sword and just file a challenge against me—as though the kingship of the Many-Colored Land was some kind of a runoff election for village dogcatcher?"

  The spectators gave a tremendous cheer. The scarlet kite wavered, its lower margin forced backward by airflow as Yosh severed a last pair of critical bridle lines. Its flayed surface stalled, tumbled. Vilkas dropped his naginata as he clung to the shrouds of the breeches buoy. He fell toward the crowded beach, with the flailing kite appearing to slap at him like some berserk billboard in the grip of a hurricane. The Lithuanian's despairing mental cry, broadcast by his gray tore, impinged on the minds of Aiken and Mercy. The mob below fled, crews abandoning their lines.

  "Damn that Sullivan!" the King raged. He gripped the rattan arms of his throne, screwed his eyes shut in an agonized grimace, and reached out with his psychokinesis. Vilkas, tangled in his kite, was about to impact on the hard, wet sand. Yosh's kite had gone out of control when its crew scattered, and now plummeted toward the sea.

  Aiken groaned.

  Vilkas in his breeches buoy swung aside and upward, beyond the menace of the crashing scarlet kite. Seconds later he wafted gently to earth. The blue kite, responding to a sudden blast of psychic wind, recovered from its negative angle of attack and soared upward at the limit of its tether. The winch operators who had let their machine unwind scrambled back to reengage the brake mechanism and effect an orderly landing. There were relieved shouts from the human crews down on the beach, cheers from the nobles who had viewed the contretemps from a dunetop vantage point, and a barely perceptible mental apology from Sullivan-Tonn on the King's intimate mode.

  Mercy had come to stand over Aiken, astonished at what the effort had cost him. She took a silk handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped his streaming brow and his eyes; and when his stertorous breathing softened and he relaxed with his head back, she said:

  "I didn't know. Was it Felice?"

  "Who else?" He regarded her through slitted, pain-bleared eyes. "Well —now you know. Be sure to tell him the good news right away! But remind him that the Spear's working just fine ... and I have a few goodies stowed away in the dungeon that I can welcome him with in case he decides to pay us both a friendly call."

  She said nothing.

  "But tell him not to delay too long," Aiken added. "I'm a funny sort. Lady Wildfire, Creator Lady. Every time I have you I heal a bit more. Olone was some help—but you're my sovereign remedy. If you stay, you may engineer your own defeat. And his!"

  Her fingers touched the skin drawn tightly over his cheekbones, the long, well-formed nose, the thin tips now gone bloodless. She knelt on the cushions heaped beside his throne, placed cool hands over his eyes, and kissed him with soft passion. She put aside her mental ved and he saw the fear-spice joined inextricably with ardor. "Amadán," she whispered. "Fatal Amadán of my soul."

  "But not your heart Never that."

  "It's ad as it was before in the Grove of May. So take what you want Nonborn King, what you need. Take it while you can, for when I'm gone you'll find no other."

  5

  DURING the latter part of the trip, when he was half-dead with hunger and thirst and the endless jouncing gait of the pack animal and the sadistic mind-prodding of his exotic captors, Tony Wayland cried:

  "I lied to you! There aren't any flying machines. I made it all up so you wouldn't slaughter me like the others. But it wasn't true. I lied, I tell you! Kill me. Please, kill me."

  Fire ballooned behind his blinded eyes. The monster with the melting face leered out of it and tittered. "All in good time, Lowlife. Very clever, weren't you? And still think you are, lying when you say you lie." The creature dealt him a terrible neural wallop, cracking the firedrake illusion into a swarm of tiny orange whirligigs. "You'll tell the whole truth when I bring you before the High King and Queen, or my name isn't Karbree the Worm!" The vision turned helminthoid. Loathsome squirmers seemed to be invading Tony's skull via the nostrils. He gagged and shrieked and promised to behave and fainted and dreamed ...

  Rowane, his Howler bride, came to comfort him.

  Sometimes she was lovely and sometimes she was her true self, with the lidless eye in the center of her forehead and the soft scales at her elbows and spine, and the mane and minor chevelure the color of a blue fox's fur.

  She said, "Oh, my Tonee. What have they done to you? Let me help. Here is water and food. Here is soft peace in my arms and a loving eye to keep watch, to guard you from further harm."

  And he felt her kiss, terrifying and ardent, and her embrace, and felt the two sets of teeth like whetted pearls—never offering hurt but only love ...

  "Rowane, you're gone!"

  He woke up again aboard the trotting helladotherium. He was still blind, still trussed as tightly as a braunschweiger banger, still jolting up the endless mountain switchbacks
on the way to High Vrazel.

  "Rowane, my little goblin flower," he wailed. "Why did I leave you? Why?"

  "We can make a pretty good guess, can't we boys?" came the derisive voice of Karbree. The other Firvulag in the party snorted and boomed and whooped with obscene glee.

  "You should have eaten more garlic and truffles, puny-prong!"

  "Or hedgehog stew!"

  "Or mandrake roots! Firvulag women take a heap of satisfying—even the Howler kind!"

  "Hey, is it true what they say about Howler muffs?"

  The merry monsters kept up their vulgar chaffing but Tony scarcely heard. Dammed-up tears tried in vain to escape the wads of sticky wax that capped his eyes. Rawhide thongs cut into his ankles and arms. The gait of the hellad bludgeoned his kidneys. The mere fact of consciousness was raw and wounding.

  Rowane, abandoned, was far away in Nionel, perhaps even now howling the walls down in their honeymoon cottage at the foot of West Toadflax Lane, her faithful heart broken. Poor Dougal, who had reluctantly accompanied his master's flight, was probably dead in the underbrush back at the scene of the ambush. The others he had betrayed were certainly slain—Orion Blue, Jiro, Boris, and (Carolina. His victims all! And when he sang for the Firvulag monarchs in High Vrazel, as he certainly would if he lasted out the journey, he'd be the death of ad the rest of them working on the two flyers back in the Vale of Hyenas.

  "I'm rotten!" Tony Wayland screamed. "Rotten! A jinx! My sliver tore—why did they have to take it?"

  He contorted his bound body in violent spasms so that even the placid hellad began to shy. Finally Karbree the Worm had to smite him in the brainstem and grant the oblivion he had sought.

  ***

  Tony fell for a short distance and landed in soft matter: sawdust or leafmould, or perhaps some kind of tanbark redolent of conifer oil.

  "Free him. Unseal his eyes," said a feminine voice, sharp as a vitredur blade. "Spruce him up a bit, then we'd bring him in."

  With his bonds severed, Tony went limp, semiparalyzed. He heard one of the subsidiary monster captors say, "Yes, Dreadful Skathe. It shall be done."

  Tony felt as though an infrared lamp had been focused on his face. The tenacious waxen blobs plugging his orbits began to soften. Claws scratched briefly around the bridge of his nose and there was a horrific rip. He lost ad his eyelashes and regained his vision in a single motion. His yell was so parched that it was barely audible above the tumult of crowd noises that surrounded him.

  "Water," he groaned, wiping his eyes with the back of one filthy hand. The sunshine was brilliant Silhouetted against the glare was a dwarf in dusty obsidian armor, one of the original ambush patrol, and a gigantic Firvulag clearly of a much more exalted rank, whose black-glass accoutrements were all chased with gold ornamentation and inset with carbuncles. This personage had eyes like two slowly dying coals of fire, undoubtedly the source of the radiation that had helped to remove his blindfold.

  "Give him a drink," said the ogrish official. Tony noted with some surprise that the giant was a female. Somebody held a horn cup full of cool liquid to his lips and he guzzled gratefully. A second dwarf with a basin and a cloth swabbed his face and hands, then began a rough massage of his tingling legs to speed the return of the circulation.

  Tony looked around. He had been dumped in a pile of fresh litter at the door of some kind of stable. Outside was a mobbed area that seemed to combine an open-air market with a crafts fair. Around the perimeter rose crags and cliffs and stony buttresses that Tony at first took to be natural geological formations. But then he saw a myriad of small windows with winking open casements, and stepped balconies and terraces with shrubs and alpine flowers, from which the higher orders of Little People surveyed their fellows in the crowded plaza below.

  The goblin market had hundreds of gaudy stalls with awnings and flapping banners bearing ideographs and totemic devices. Vendors sold food and clothing, domestic implements, jewelry, rugs, weapons, herbs, intoxicants, perfumes, and medicines. One large group was gathered around a hipparion auction, regarding the half-tamed, prancing little animals with expressions that mingled suspicion and fascination. Another crush of people waited their turn to enter an ornate open-sided tent hemmed about with an honor guard of giants bearing effigy standards draped with chains of gold-plated skulls. The air vibrated with the calls of the merchants, the laughter and shouts of buyers and lookers, and music from strolling gnomish players.

  "Up with him," said the black-armored giantess with the red eyes.

  Tony was hauled to his feet and stood trembling and blinking. The dappled buckskin outfit he'd chosen for its camouflage value when absconding from Nionel was stained with blood and a medley of other muck.

  "He looks pretty scruffy to present to the Highs," the giantess observed. "For Té's sake fetch some kind of chaliko blanket or a cloak to make him halfway decent"

  "At once, Great Captain!" One of the dwarfs scuttled off, to return with a fairly clean green-leather poncho. This was plopped over Tony's head, whereupon the Dreadful Skathe nodded and motioned her prisoner to follow her. The two dwarfs, bearing serrated black halberds, came along behind. As they made their way through the crowd, Karbree the Worm reappeared and accepted the salute of his little henchmen. He had freshened up for the royal audience, putting off his utilitarian field harness in favor of parade armor almost as handsome as Skathe's.

  "Good catch, Worm," she remarked by way of greeting. "His mind leaks like a colander. Té knows what use the Highs can make of his intelligence, but it's diverting as all hell."

  "The Lowlives are full of surprises ever," Karbree said jovially. "Sheer good luck, stumbling over him and his warders over at the Seekol headwaters. Normally we're never within twenty leagues of the place. We always use the main trad along the Pliktol. But one of our lads had head of a secret spot where hoobies were supposed to grow thick as fleas on a bear-dog, even during high summer, so we took a detour. Never did find the mushrooms."

  They came to the mob surrounding the royal tent One of the dwarfs levered his way into the throng with the butt of his halberd, shouting, "Way, dammit! Way for the Great Captain Skathe and the Hero Karbree the Worm!"

  The commoners fed back, chattering and grinning. A few made rude faces at Tony or contrived to step on his toes as he shuffled along. And then they were inside the big pavilion, which was full of Firvulag nobility, both enarmored and casually attired. With the crowd noises somewhat muffled, Tony was able to hear a succession of ushers announcing them. A frightful ogre whom Skathe addressed affectionately as Medor came to fetch them, saying:

  "The artisans are bringing in the Singing Stone right now. You can have your turn right after. Come on in here and Fd let you have a front-row view. Damnedest thing I ever saw."

  A dwarf prodded Tony and he followed Karbree to the edge of a space bordered by scarlet and gold ropes. King Sharn and Queen Ayfa sat on a low dais at one side, flanked by standard-bearers. They were clad in light robes of blue, green, and sliver stripes and wearing identical silvery diadems. Elfin pages came and went carrying bowls of fruit and candy, beer and cyser flagons nestled in buckets of snow, and occasional presents from favor seekers. On the left hand of the joint monarchs sat the royal scribes, busily accepting petitions, complaints, propositions, and denunciations.

  "May it please the High King, the High Queen, and the Gnomish Council of Firvulag!" the chief herald proclaimed. "The Guild of Gemcutters, the Honorable Yuchor Tidypaw presiding, does herewith set forth for the approval and hoped-for acceptance of the Firvulag Nation the new Grand Trophy!"

  A gasp of awe went up from the assembly. Ten Little People in Guild regalia, led by their President, toiled up to the thrones with a dolly on which the Singing Stone rested. It was an enormous beryl, translucent blue-green with a faint core of pulsating light. It had been fashioned into a field stool of the type that Firvulag and Tanu royalty used when conferring accolades on heroes during the heat of the Grand Combat. In cross section it was a
shallow U-shape, backless, with scrolled armrests. The legs and corner members were carved to resemble heraldic winged creatures with vaguely reptilian bodies, the wyverns of lost Duat. All of the carvings were accented and fimbriated with lustrous platinum-rhodium alloy. A green silken cushion, tasseled and brocaded with thread of the same metals, rested on the stool's seat.

  "This Grand Trophy," the herald resumed, "shall be the symbol of the new Era of Antagonism between the Little People of the Many-Colored Land and their execrable Foe—through the length of the world's age!"

  A bedlam of cheers and martial shouts broke out, interspersed with sundry curses and cries of "Death to all Tanu!" and "Ylahayll Aiken-Lugonn!"

  The King and Queen lifted their arms for silence and the herald completed his announcement.

  "This Singing Stone shall be awarded to the battle-company that is victorious in the contest to be held this year upon the traditional Firvulag Field of Gold. It has been programmed so that it will sing a joyous song with a hundred voices—but only when the true High King of the Many-Colored Land sits enthroned upon it. Should any upstart or lesser ruler presume to mount the Stone, it will be death and not sweet music he will reap in the doing!"

  The Firvulag nobility let loose another deafening clamor. Numbers of them flashed their illusory aspects, and glowing grotesqueries and nightmare apparitions sprang up here and there among the well-dressed giants and gnomes.

  The President of the Gemcutters Guild now approached the dais while his people were offloading the trophy from its carrier. "High King! High Queen! Joint Sovereigns of the Heights and Depths, Monarchs of the Infernal Infinite, Father and Mother of All Firvulag, and Undoubted Rulers of the Known World—manifest!"

  With a flourish, the gnome stepped to one side, gesturing at the waiting stool. Sharn gave it a speculative look but didn't move.