The Nonborn King (52 page)

Rowane, his Howler bnde, 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 hann."

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

"Rowane, you're gone!"

He woke up again aboard the Ironing helladotherium. He was still blind, still trussed as lightly 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 Firvutag in the party snorted and boomed and whooped with obscene glee.

"You should have eaten more garlic and truffles, punyprong!"

"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, Bons, and Karolma- 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 all 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 silver torc, why did they have to take it?"

He contorted his bound body in violent spasms so that even the placid heliad 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 leaf-mould, 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'll bring him in."

With his bonds severed, Tony went limp, semi paralyzed. 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 np He lost all 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 basm 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 Te'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 tike a colander. Te knows what use the Highs can make of his intelligence, but it's diverting as all hell."

"The Lowlives arc 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 trail along the Pliktol. But one of our lads had heard 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 me 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 fell 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 enannored 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 I'll 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 standardbearers. They were clad in light robes of blue, green, and silver 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 hopedfor 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 comer members were carved to resemble heraldic winged creatures with vaguely reptilian bodies, the wyvems of lost Duat. Ail 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.

Ayfa pointed her stem finger at the Honorable Yuchor Tidypaw. "Are you sure the thing's programmed properly?"

The guildsman snatched off his cap and fet! to his knees. "Oh, yes. High Queen!"

"After you, dear," Ayfa said to her husband. Sharn strode majestically to the Stone, took a firm stance in front of it, and lowered the regal fundament.

Eight notes pealed out. They were like immense belltones that had somehow acquired the overtones of exotic voices. They swelled in the air like physical presences, felt as well as heard, mirroring and enhancing one another with marvelous harmonic vibrations. The eight notes seemed to call forth responses from the earth, from the encompassing rocks of the mountain, from the very bones of the hearers. Each reiteration of the phrase was louder than the one before, more glorious, more painful.

Recovering from his first stupefaction. Tony Wayland began to laugh. The sound was lost in the Stone's singing, but King Sharn took notice. He stood up. The music sighed away in a reverberating diminuendo, leaving Tony's crazed cackling as a shocking counterpoint until he realized that all of the exotic minds were focused upon him, outraged.

Swallowing the last chuckles, he mumbled, "Well, you see... it's... I mean, it's..." He hummed a tittle tune in the same key, one that blended in an uncanny fashion with the still lingering Song of the Stone. "It's got to be a joke... by that damn Denny Johnson or somebody. Weia! Waga' Woge du Welle, walle zur Wiege, wagala weia, "

A roof-high albino scorpion with incandescent guts reared above Tony, Karbree, Skathe, and the dwarfs. "Shut up.'"

The Worm shrugged. "High King, he's only a little loopy from the trip. Wait until you hear his story."

Sharn spun around, reassuming his normal form. He raised his arms and the fierce mutterings that had broken out in accompaniment to Tony's impromptu performance faded. The King said, "We thank the loyal membership of the Gemcutters Guild and its President, Yuchor Tidypaw, for a job well done. Let this Singing Stone now be removed to the Royal Treasury, where it is to be kept safely until the Grand Tourney, ten weeks from now."

There were spatterings of applause. Ayfa came over to frown at the cowering metallurgist, now firmly in the grip of the dwarfs. They had crossed their black-glass halberds under his throat.

"Who is this miserable wretch?" the Queen asked shortly.

"That," said the King, "is what we're going to find out."

I loved her dearly but she was utterly insatiable [Tony Wayland said], and I knew I was for it unless I got some rest. I mean, -if I'd still had my silver torc there'd have been nothing to it! But bareneck...

At any rate, I got hold of my friend Dougal, who'd also taken a Howler bride in the Grand Loving- His bearings were coming up on terminal metal fatigue just like mine, so we lit off one dark night, figuring to make our way to Goriah and Aiken Drum. You know he's promised torcs to anybody who joins him... You do know... He hasn't?... Christ, you can't depend on anybody these days...

Yes. Well, Dougal and I decided to keep clear of the Nonol and Pliktol Rivers. Too many Howlers on the trails. We went up the ProtoSeine instead; the river you peopie call the Seekol. We didn't know about the giant hyenas, you see.