The Nonborn King (7 page)

She held the torc high. It blazed incandescent and was clean. She plunged back into the water and in a moment the raven was rocketing skyward, gripping a golden circlet in powerful talons. Her mind's voice shouted triumph and profound reliefShe called out to her Beloved as she had done so often, using the declamatory mode of mental speech that could span continents and oceans and reverberate around the world like the sonorities of dying thunder.

Culluket!

She called. High in the featureless gray above drowned Aven she called.

The devils answered. Felice's exaltation changed to terror. She shrank within an opaque thought-screen and sent the bird body hurtling in the direction of the Spanish mainland, protected from friction-bum by a subconical psychocreative shield. Only when she reached the vicinity of Mount Mulhacen did she slacken the furious dash and venture a cautious peep to see whether or not the devils had tracked her They had not. Once again, she had eluded them. She dropped all the screens and voiced a raucous, defiant croak. Then she flew home, the newest bit of treasure secure in her claws.

2

MORE THAN EIGHT THOUSAND KILOMETERS WEST OF EUROPE,

the great bulldog tarpon of the Pliocene Epoch had once again begun their spring migration to the spawning grounds around Ocala Island and the Still-Vexed Bennoothes. It was time for the saint's elder brother to suspend his weary star-search in favor of his sole form of relaxation, hunting the silvery monsters.

The man in the skiff watched the fish come with his farsense He was motionless and made no sound, hidden behind a mass of mangroves and flowering epiphytes in the Suwanee estuary on the west side of the island. He deliberately limited his mind's stupendous vision to the river channel within a few hundred meters of his hiding place, for he had his rules in the stalking of the big tarpon and he would not violate them. Not consciouslyIn the manner of their kind, the fish surfaced and rolled in the sparkling blue water, taking gulps of air. Scales larger than a handspan reflected the tropical sun like mirrors. With their undershot jaws, glaring black eyes. and bristling gills of lurid scarlet, the tarpon resembled cruising dragons rather than ordinary fish. Numbers of them exceeded three meters in length and they were capable of attaining an even greater size as the fisherman knew only too well. When hooked, a bulldog tarpon would fight with maniacal ferocity, sometimes for twenty hours.

He watched them parade by while the sun soared higher, bringing a sheen of sweat to his deeply tanned skin He wore only a pair of stagged dungarees, bleached by age and sail water His self-rejuvenating body was as powerful and firmly muscled as ever; but his face showed, as on a chart of flesh and bone, the pain-etched odyssey of the failed idealist. Only when one particularly large specimen of tarpon glided past, its jaw-plates scarred from an enconnter several seasons past. did the fisherman's mouth curve in a reminiscent, one-sided smile of peculiar sweetness.

Not you, he told the huge fish. You've had your turn on the hook. Another A greater.

Engrossed as he was in the study of the tarpon, he was instantly aware of the featherlight scrutiny" the farsense of the children, spying on him again, even though all of the inhabitants of Ocala knew that it was strictly forbidden to disturb him when the tarpon were running. None of the surviving senior rebeis would dream of it, remembering only too well the capabilities of the one who had led them in their challenge of the galaxy. But the second generation, now grown to restless young adulthood, was less inclined to reverence. Even his own children, Hagen and Cloud (never having been told of his aborted plans for them had the Rebellion succeeded), believed that his mental powers were diminished by time, and by his thus-far futile scrutiny of some 36,000 Pliocene solar systems in an attempt to locate other coadunate minds The disdain of the youngsters had been shaken only once:

last fall, when Felice Landry in her extremity besought help from what she believed were dark forces- So powerful had been the girl's projection of need that the operant metapsychics of Ocala, there on the other side of the world, had clearly farsensed what she was trying to accomplish at Gibraltar He had smiled at her temerarious rage in that whimsical manner of his. and said: "Why shouldn't the Angel of the Abyss take care of his own?" And forthwith he had combined and focused the psychoenergies of the forty-three surviving conspirators of the Metapsychic Rebellion, plus the uncoadunate but immense creativity of their thirty-two mature children, and vouchsafed the totality to the madwoman. And the Empty Sea filled.

This had been a mere hint, a shadow of his potential. But it was enough to make the more imaginative of the youngsters reassess their derogation of the lonely star-searcher.

Sitting there in the skiff, he felt them sweep him again, ever so discreetly He knew what they were up to They were bored with their exile on Ocala, bored with the murderous intrigues and harsh restrictions of their elders, and above all bored by their own lack of coadunale menial Unity (for none of the fleeing rebels had possessed the specialized training required of metapsychic preceptors). Now that Europe, the mysterious and alluring Many-Colored Land, was known to be in a slate of chaos, the more ambitious members of the second generation were hatching callow schemes of conquest. Not for them the patient search of planet after planet for kindred minds, the dream of a rescue from exile The children had hopes of achieving power and Unity right here on Pliocene Earth. And the bolder ones entertained an even greater ambition. An unthinkable one.

Out in the channel, the enormous fish cavorted in the sun.

He lifted his rod from its case, opened the tackle box, inspected the reel mechanism with his deep-vision, mounted it, and began to thread the line. The fly rod was laminated bamboo. Grafted by himself more than twenty years ago. He had made the reel as well. But that fishing line was the product of a world six million years removed from the Pliocene Suwanee estuary. Tapered, balanced, and irreplaceable, subtly armored in the trace against the tarpon's steely jaws. it merged to a vulnerable 6.?5-kilo test tippet that gave the fish an almost overwhelming sporting advantage over the angler. To catch even the least of those splendid brutes on a flyrod with such a gossamer thread (and without using any metapsychic force, that went without saying!) was a supreme achievement. But this season, he intended to aim beyond supremacy toward the ultimate. He was going to take one of the Old Ones, the glittering leviathans of the tarpon clan that approached four meters in length and nearly three hundred kilos in weight. He was going to bring in one of those fish on the frail tine, with his homemade fly rod I can do it, he told himself, smiling the attractive one-sided smile One old monster against another.

The farsense of the children slid over him again. Closing his mind to every other input. Marc Remillard settled down m the skiff in the sunshine, waiting for his prey.

3

IN GORIAH, AFTER MIDNIGHT WHEN THE MOON WAS DOWN,the cloud cover broke along the Bntlany shore and the meteors of March appeared in all their splendor. In a fit of playfulness, Aiken Drum ordered the lights in the city to be extinguished and had Mercy roused from sleep and brought to where he waited on a narrow parapet surmounting the highest spire of the Castle of Glass.

She stepped out into the amazing night and cned, "Ah!"

Spraying among the western constellations were countless arching white sparks, and larger meteors with lucent silver tails, and occasional orange fireballs slashing the sky with bold strokes of afterglow. All of them rushed outward from a tight central focus like spokes in a starry wheel, or petals unfurling endlessly from some astral chrysanthemum. The meteors flew over the heads of Aiken and Mercy and dived behind the mass of Breton Island across the strait. Some of them quenched themselves in the black sea. The night was filled with a faint rustling sound, like ethereal whispering.

"For you!" Aiken exclaimed magniloquently, compassing the spectacle with a possessive sweep of his hand. "One of my more modest productions, but still worthy of a Tanu queen!"

Laughing, she came to him. "Not yet a queen, my shining braggart, in spite of all your saucy promises. But the starshower is lovely, not that I believe for a moment that you caused it "

"Doubting me again, woman^" The small man in the gleaming suit all covered with pockets lifted both arms A dozen of the meteors seemed to plummet straight down at him, emitting a scorching hiss, and shrink to form a coronet of white lights that scintillated insanely He held it out to her with a triumphant gnn "I crown you Queen of the Many-Colored Land'"

"Illusions'" she cned "that for your shifty love-gift. Lord Lugonn Alken Drum'" She snapped her fingers at me starry diadem and it died to embers, sifting through Alken's hands like dwindling coais through a grate But as his face fell she suddenly smiled at him there in the blazing darkness, making his heart heel half-seas over

"But I do love the real meteors, and you're a dear trickster to have called me out to see them "

She kissed him full and long, with her wild eyes wide open, and while he was disarmed and his mind-shields awry, she caught him unprepared with a redactive probe

"You do love me'" she exclaimed

"The hell I do!" He mustered his defenses, reasserting selfcontrol, trying to escape her mental scrutiny without hurting her The great metapsychic faculties that had continued to grow throughout the winter months, those powers that had evoked admiring subservience or sullen awe from the surviving Tanu Great Ones, failed before Mercy-Rosmar "I don't love you'" his mind and voice protested "It isn't necessary "

Her memment bubbled up "Necessary? But you'd take my pleasure-gifts, wouldn't you, love or not, you archdeceiver' And you want them now Admit it' Well, then

The fading redactive lancet softened to a sweet searing burst that coursed along his nerves and sent him falling, aflame like the meteors m helpless sexual transport "Enchantress," he groaned, flat on the giass floor of the turret with his feet tangled in the skirts of her flowing peignoir Then, as he recovered. he began to laugh to cover the other emotion

Mercy knelt beside him. cradling his head and kissing his eyelids "Don't be afraid," she said "It will all work as you planned."

"I'm not afraid of anything'" he protested "Together, we'll lick 'em all. Lady Wildfire '

"I don't mean that, you schemer ' She looked down at him. relaxed in her lap with his head against her swollen belly "But you do almost make me believe you can bring the glory back "

"I can' Trust me I've got everything worked out How to handle the Firvulag, the way to win the loyally of the Tanu diehards, the restoration of the economy, all of it I'll be king and you'll be queen, and our winter dreams will alt come true "

His face with its golliwog gnn was bright with jacky-lanthom radiance He felt Mercy's mind start with an abrupt sense of deja vu that was so intense that it made even the sleeping fetus stir

"I've seen your face before," she said wonderingly "Back in the Old World I'm sure of it It was in Italy in Firenze "

"Not bloody likely The only time I came to Old Earth was on my tnp to the auberge and I went right to France with no detours That was after you'd already gone through the timegate '

"I saw you, she insisted "Or was it a picture of you? Perhaps in the Palazzo Vecchio. But whose portrait'?"

"Not an Italian gene in my bod," he murmured, reaching up to stroke her hair Meteors sketched a surreal hdio behind her head "Dalnada, where I grew up, was a Scottish world And all of us test-tube brats had certified tartan chromosomes "

He levitated until their lips met She melted into him again, as he knew she would, triggering the neural conflagration that he could not help craving in spite of his fear When he regained his senses, still lying in her lap, the baby was kicking him in the ear and the damn meteors exploding in pyrotechnic mockery

"Shame on you for disturbing my darling Agraynel," Mercy said

Alken felt her maternal thought-song soothe the unborn girl Suddenly, for no apparent reason, his eyes filled with tears Mortified, he whirled his most impregnable mental barrier into place so that Mercy would not know how much he envied the baby. He said. "Only one more month until it's born. And then I'm going to have you, my Lady Wildfire! Find out how you knock me out of orbit, and give you some of your own back with interest!"

"Not until May," she chided him. "At the Grand Loving, as we agreed."

"Oh, no! That's just the official wedding- You aren't going to hold me off that long! -. And come to think of it, why shouldn't I lake you metapsychically right now, just the way you've been mind-screwing me?" His arms closed around her shoulders, pulling her strongly down. His coercive power began to bore into her softness "Show me how you do your magic sex! Show me, or I'll just find out by experimenting!"

"You may not!" she cned, countering him with a psychocreative riposte that atl but blinded him. "It would make a fearful womb-quake in addition to the neural surge. That's the way we women are made- It would be bad for the baby."

He released her. The damned fear came again, and so did the tears. "To hell with the baby."

Her face came close to his. Her expression of indignation changed into tenderness. "Ah, poor little one. I see. I see."

Her lips descended to drink his tears.

He thrashed wildly to escape her physical embrace, sprawling onto the floor. His mouth lightened to a thin slot and his eyes were wide and black. "I don't want that from you! Ever."

"Ah, well." She shrugged. "But you needn't fear it, really. It's quite natural for the two womanly functions to combine in the loving."

"You don't love me, and I don't love you. So why pretend? And I don't need your pity, dammit!" He cast about desperately, to put her in the wrong. "Why haven't you ever let me pleasure you? Not once! Always ready to blast me into a coma, but never letting me touch you. Am I so disgusting?"

"Don't be silly. It's the baby, I tell you."