The Adversary - 4 (29 page)

"Yes," she said. "Oh, yes."

She lifted his hand, which she still held, and brushed the back of it with her lips. Then they sat together drinking tea, watching pink dawn stain the eastern horizon. It was, Marc assured her, a certain sign of fair weather ahead.

CHAPTER TWO

The final hem adjustment had been completed by Mooliane Frog-Maid, and now Katlinel stood in the centre of the fitting room modelling the finished creation. The place was crowded with the little beings who had worked on the dress-portunes and korrigans and nereides and nimble-fingered trows-and these twittered anxiously as the head couturier, Bukin the Estimable, pursed his lips and strode around and around the Mistress of Nionel. He prodded an errant lace ruffle here, straightened a gilded wire there, leaned close to scrutinize a critical seam or a suspect bit of beadwork. Finally he stepped back, cleared his throat, and announced: "It will do. Bring the looking glass!"

All the goblin tailors and seamstresses squealed for joy and clapped their hands, paws, or other tactile appendages. Two sturdy kobold wenches hauled a three-way standing mirror into position, and for the first time, Katlinel saw herself in the gown she would wear as hostess of the first Grand Tourney.

It was cut from a stiff white fabric of a mysterious iridescence that glimmered pink and yellow and pale green, like the interior of a seashell. The low-cut bodice and long sleeves fitted closely, as did the slender underskirt. Springing from the lowered waist were wired, tapering panels that curved outward and then in toward the knees, like the reflexed petals of a nacreous lily.

Beneath this was an overskirt of delicate golden lace, which flared out below the petals in a bright fluted cone. Gold lace also draped the pearly fabric of the sleeves and formed wide cuffs. The head and decolletage of the Lady of the Howlers was set off by a fantastic high collar, and she wore a delicate golden face-frame. As a finishing touch, the entire ensemble was adorned with crystal beads and briolettes, which reflected the ever-changing hues of the fabric.

Katlinel turned slowly in front of the mirrors, a reduplicated vision of aurora colours misted with gold. "The gown is magnificent," she said. "I've never seen anything so wonderful. Thank you, dear friends-and especially you, Bukin." She bent down and kissed the brownie designer on his corrugated pate. A flush rose from his neck to the tips of his hairy ears.

"Gracious Mistress Katy," he said gruffly, "my career spans three centuries. I have in that time conceived many a splendid garment-for you know that our misbegotten folk have no peers in the Many-Coloured Land in matters of personal adornment.

This creation, however, is my masterpiece-and that of all the artisans gathered about you."

A pixie voice piped, "The pearl lame is unique!" And another chimed in, "Fashioning that gold lace nearly drove us dotty!"

Bukin shuffled his feet. "This Grand Tourney will be the first time in eight hundred and fifty-six years that our Howler nation has participated in a joint event with our nonmutant brethren.

We want to do so proudly. And since we are especially proud of you, we intend to glorify you before the assembled multitude.

Lady ... you are a flower sprung from Tanu and human stock, now blooming in a garden that must seem strange and bizarre.

But we rejoice to have you with us. You console us with your beauty and kindness. By showing your loving devotion to our Master, the most fearfully deformed of us all, you have brought fresh hope to us. You have seen fit to thank us for this gift, but we are the ones who should thank you."

"Thank you," sighed the monsters.

Then the outer door of the atelier was flung open and a greenhaired sprite shrieked, "He comes! Lord Sugoll comes to see our Lady!"

Katlinel held out her arms as the Lord of the Mutants entered, tall and terrible, trailed by the human geneticist, Gregory Prentice Brown, who beamed as the lovers embraced.

"I thought to save these gifts until the Tourney Eve," Sugoll said. "But I think it better to bestow them now, in the presence of these devoted friends. Gregory! The casket."

Mopping and mowing like an excited tamarin, Greg-Donnet Genetics Master held out a sizable silver-gilt box. Sugoll opened it, and as the horde of goblin workers squealed and whistled in astonishment, he removed a necklace of rare aurora-borealis stones. Working dextrously with two tentacles, he fastened it just beneath his wife's golden torc. A third tentacle plucked forth a coronet set with the same strangely iridescent gems.

Katlinel took it and settled it on her elaborate coiffure.

"Now you are truly our queen," said Sugoll.

The mob of grotesques cheered and capered about. Greggy made a leg, kissed Katlinel's hand, and murmured, "Smashing.

Truly smashing."

"Now," the Howler prince said to his folk, "I would ask you to leave us for a time while I confer with my Lady and Lord Greggy on matters of state."

"Lunch break-everybody out!" cried Bukin. "Scoot, you imps and spunkies and tankeraboguses!" The mutant workers fled helter-skelter, and in a moment Sugoll and his wife and Greg-Donnet were alone. The geneticist pulled up two chairs for Katlinel and himself, while the great abomination took his ease on the fitting room floor.

"There are odd doings afoot," Sugoll said. "King AikenLugonn has requested Howler guides for an excursion into Fennoscandia-seeking certain unusual ores."

"Whatever for?" Katlinel asked.

The little old geneticist giggled. "Precisely what we asked ourselves, Katy dear! The minerals in question are gadolinite and xenotime, sources of the so-called rare-earth elements. His Puckish Majesty was very cagey at first about his need for these peculiar substances. That his need was urgent became apparent when Lord Sugoll showed no inclination to cooperate!"

"And why should I cooperate?" growled the mutant ruler.

"What's he done for us lately? Just seven weeks until the Tourney, and he hasn't even sent us the first instalment of the Tanu share of the expenses. The fribbling little pecht! Probably blew his whole treasury on that shameless Grand Loving spectacle in May ... "

"Rare earths?" Katlinel, who had been a member of the Creator Guild and a High Table sitter before her defection, shook her bejewelled head in puzzlement. "I know little enough chemistry, but sufficient to say that there is scant use for such materials in Tanu technology."

"But not in that of the Milieu!" snapped Sugoll. "And when I balked, the golden wirling finally had to come clean and tell me why he wanted the stuff. He's building a time-gate machine!"

"Almighty Tana," whispered the Lady. "Not-a portal leading into the future world?"

Greg-Donnet nodded with wry solemnity. "It seems he's collected experts from all over the Many-Coloured Land, and plans to reopen the gate that the redoubtable Madame Guderian slammed shut. The potential for mischief making is formidable!"

"Naturally, given the facts, I pledged our full cooperation,"

Sugoll said.

Katlinel stared at him, taken aback.

Greggy said gently, "If the Howler people could pass through the gate into the world I came from, there would be no doubt that their deformed bodies could be remoulded, their genes engineered to the Firvulag norm once again. I've tried a few feeble experiments along those lines during my stay with you-but my piddling attempts are as nothing beside the scientific resources of the Milieu. Their scientists could do in a few months what it might take me decades to accomplish on my own here in the Pliocene."

"I can't believe that Aiken-" Katlinel broke off, shaking her head. "He's devilishly clever, we all know that. But this doesn't seem possible. He must be hatching some other scheme ... perhaps using this time-gate ploy to divert Sharn and Ayfa from their warlike designs."

"If so," Sugoll put in, "then Teah send success to the Tanu King! And all the more reason for us to cooperate. I have delegated Kalipin to assist Aiken's expedition, since he has had experience in dealing with Lowlives; and for the technical matters, Ilmary and Koblerin the Knocker, who know more about the minerals of the lands beyond the Amber Lakes than any among us."

"Let us not raise false hopes among the people," Katlinel pleaded.

"Don't worry," Greggy said. "I'll keep on with my own experiments, just as before." He winked merrily. "Actually, the Skin-tank device looks rather promising. I have several volunteers eager to try it."

"When does Aiken's expedition set out?" Katlinel asked.

"The first scouts should be here in a few days," said Sugoll.

"From Nionel they sail north to the Big Bend of the Seekol, then cut across the Peneplain to the Anversian Sea."

"It'll take them months to find those minerals," Katlinel said.

"If they ever do. And as for constructing a time-gate machine-it's just too incredible!"

"I'm afraid you're right," the geneticist sighed. "But if it did turn out to be true ... " He grinned at Katlinel and her superlatively hideous spouse. "How I'd love to take the two of you on a grand tour of the Galactic Milieu. You'd love it. Really, you would."

Kuhal Earthshaker sat on a glass bench in a secluded part of the castle garden, waiting until she should come. The evening was alive with sound: chirping green bush crickets, a nightingale warbling his heart out in anticipation of the fall mating season, the chiming of small crystal bells festooning the trees, and as a background to it all there were crowd sounds from the city's Gyre of Commerce, which lay only a few hundred metres down the hill, beyond the garden wall and a narrow greenbelt. During the regime of Kuhal's elder brother, Nodonn Battlemaster, evening markets had been forbidden; but the usurper changed all that in his haste to curry favour with his compatriots, who preferred to shop and carouse after the fierce Pliocene sun had set. Now greys and barenecks wandered abroad freely at all hours, disturbing the peace and making extra work for the rama cleanup crews.

A sturdy crescent moon was rising. Fireflies winked in the shrubbery surrounding the lily pool. Up in the Castle of Glass, the jewel-coloured windows were ablaze and a full show of faerie lights outlined the freshly repaired towers and battlements. The King, having returned triumphant from Calamosk that afternoon, was having a party to introduce the North Americans to the High Table and to the flower and chivalry of Goriah. Kuhal had put in a brief, obligatory appearance and managed to arrange this rendezvous.

And now she was coming.

He rose from the bench as he felt her coolly questing thought.

She came out from among the willows, a strangely alien figure in a futuristic diamante sheath of grey satin, her mind carefully guarded.

Cloud, he said, opening to her.

Then they were standing together, not touching physically.

Her redactive probe, soft as a moth wing, worked swiftly behind his eyes. She said aloud, "Well you're truly recovered at last.

Both hemispheres in fine fettle, all your metabilities restored, your bereavement receded to memory, where it belongs. Fighting a losing battle and working off your penance cleaning Aiken's Augean stables seem to have agreed with you. I'd say you were a normal man again."

"Only when you're with me," he said. "And it seems we've been separated for ever."

"Less than three weeks!" she said, laughing and drawing back from him. His face was shadowed and his fair hair tousled. For the first time since the Grand Loving, he wore the rose-gold robes of the Second Lord Psychokinetic.

"It hardly seems possible," he said. "So many terrible things have happened."

"Well, your ordeal is over now, and you're reinstated at the High Table-for services rendered." Her voice had gone flat and the mental carapace hardened. "What do you intend to do now?"

"Serve him," Kuhal replied, "as I vowed. He is sending me to collect armaments for Roniah, and to secure Castle Gateway in preparation for the new construction. It's a task fraught with great responsibility."

"No doubt," she said shortly, turning away from him to look out over the pond. "Good luck."

He was bewildered. "Cloud-what's wrong? I thought you would rejoice at this meeting, as I have. Has my submission to the King displeased you? Changed this between us?"

She was wearing a shawl of cobweb wool, which she now pulled more closely about her shoulders, although the evening was warm. "There's nothing between us, Kuhal-except perhaps a little transference, which is rather common in redactor-patient relationships ... So you're off to Roniah, are you? How soon?"

"The day after tomorrow. But the task need not take long, and we can find ways to be together-"

"No," she said offhandedly, seeming to be absorbed in the sight of a great white heron that had appeared among the waterlilies, stalking froggy victims. "I don't think we'll see each other again, now that you're well. I'll be staying here in Goriah, helping to keep the recruited scientists in line. A number of them are less than enthusiastic about the Guderian Project. But we must complete the device as soon as possible and I'll have no time for distractions. You really don't need me any more, Kuhal-and I certainly don't need you."

He laughed, a low and quiet sound, and with the utmost gentleness exerted his psychokinesis. She felt herself lifted a few centimetres above the grass and rotated in midair to face him.

He had lowered himself to one knee so that their eyes could meet, but there was no trace of subservience in him as he said, "You lie to me, Cloud Remillard. You with your mind in hiding!

I know you do care for me, else you would not have had tears in your eyes upon your presentation to the High Table this evening-nor would you have agreed to meet me here."

"Put me down!" she exclaimed angrily. "You great barbarian lout!" Her mind pummelled him, but she was unable to free herself from the humiliating sustention, or to undermine his coercion with her own. After a long moment he lowered her, still smiling into her outraged face.

"You lie," he repeated. "Admit it."

The mind-screen trembled. Anger gave way to a more complex emotion. "Perhaps I do care ... a little. But since I've been back with my own people, I've had time to think. To analyse our situation in the light of what ... will happen."