"What am I gonna do?" he whimpered.
Survive until sunset, something reminded him, and there would be a recess of three hours while the field was cleared of the wounded and the dead. If he could manage to hide until then—
He tripped over the two decapitated Firvulag and stopped his aimless flight. There was no natural cover on the Plain—so why not? Still shrouded in thick dust clouds, he flung himself down and burrowed among their dark-dripping limbs. Then he withdrew his consciousness into that inadequate little closet of refuge Aiken had taught him to use when the women drove him to the brink of madness. Unless someone beamed a thought right at him, he was safe. Almost all sensation, almost all pain ceased. Raimo Hakkinen waited.
The sun climbed high, heating the White Silver Plain and generating rising air currents that lifted the pall of dust. The warriors of both sides renewed hostilities. Great deeds of heroism were accomplished by Tanu and Firvulag alike, but the gray-torc levies were being decimated by the new tactics of the Little People, which placed the Tanu in a potentially dangerous position.
Raimo lay unmoving, even though some skirmishes took place only a few meters away from him. He suffered cramps and heat and thirst. Flies descended to feast on the blood and lay their eggs in dead flesh, and some of them crept into his helmet. Rousing from his stupor for a moment, he used the shreds of his psychokinetic power to squash them against the insides of the sallet. From time to time he groped deliriously for booze. The fuchsia and yellow feathers of his helmet crest shaded him slightly, but he still broiled in his shell of pink glass until late afternoon when the sun declined at long last and silhouetted the spine of Aven against blood-red light before it disappeared.
A single horn sounded a silvery note that reverberated in his mind.
The noises of battle faded. A wind of luxuriant coolness came rushing over the salt. The armies withdrew.
Soon, Raimo told himself. Soon—when it was a bit darker.
He was wide-awake now but still lying motionless. Unfortunately, he had concealed himself in a spot precariously close to the huge Tanu encampment. Redactors and farsensors on missions of mercy were spreading out onto the quiet Plain, guiding bearers to the wounded Tanu and human knights. And there were others as well, leaders mounted on fresh chalikos assessing the results of the first daylight action. If any of them detected him—!
He tried to suppress all thought projection, shrinking back into his little skull-closet. I am a dead thing let me be I am dead pass me by ignore me go away go away...
"Oh, you are, are you?"
The voice was in his mind and ear. He refused to open his eyes.
Laughter. "Come on now, Psychokinetic Brother. You don't look as badly wounded as all that!"
The Firvulag bodies, those precious sheltering bodies, shifted. He began to slip down onto the salt; but someone held his head, compelling him to look out through the opened visor of his sallet.
Two Tanu women—one in purple, one in redactor's red and silver. Behind them, a pair of stolid male barenecks with a litter. The stiffened Firvulag corpses lay like discarded headless mannequins beside him.
"He is not wounded at all, Sister," said the farsensor. Her deep-eyed face was grim and shadowed beneath the hood of her cloak.
"It's true," the redactor confirmed. "His mind also is untouched by the Foe. He is a malingerer. A craven!"
In a panic, Raimo scrambled to his feet. The cramped muscles of his legs refused to hold him up. He fell—and then the full force of Tanu coercion flowed from both women to his torc and held him in thrall. He stood perfectly still, a statue encased in jeweled pink plates crusted with other people's blood.
"You know the penalty for cowardice, Lowlife," said the farsensor.
He had to reply, "Yes, Exalted Lady."
"Go to the place then. Go where you belong!"
He turned from them and began to trudge across the battlefield, to where the Great Retort of glass stood waiting on its high scaffold.
***
Seven hundred kilometers to the west, the body of a young plesiosaur lay stranded on the rocks of the Alboran Volcano.
It had been hunting tunny-fish in the Atlantic, oblivious to any danger. And the tunnies themselves were chasing flying squid, and the squid in their turn had pursued a shoal of silver sardines that had been browsing upon the microscopic organisms of pelagic plankton.The unexpected current had seized them all, large creatures and small, and sucked them into the Gibraltar rift.
For a hellish quarter of an hour they had been buffeted and churned and then they were flung over the incredible waterfall. The young plesiosaur's graceful neck snapped as it impacted into the foaming pother of the new Mediterranean Sea. It died instantly. The tunnies, torn and battered against submerged rocks, succumbed not long afterward, as did the squid. Because of their small size, most of the sardines managed to traverse the falls shocked but physically unharmed. When their brains regained a measure of equanimity they attempted to go about life as usual, but the turbulent water filling the Alboran Basin was so full of silt that their tiny gills were clogged and every one of them suffocated. Of all the creatures that had been pulled through the newborn Straits of Gibraltar, only the hardy plankton survived.
The body of the plesiosaur had floated eastward until it came ashore on a slope of the Alboran Volcano that had once stood 600 meters above the floor of the adjacent dry basin. Gulls and carrion crows feasted on the carcass before the rising flood reclaimed it and set it adrift again in the misty dark.
8
IN THE RECESS BEFORE DAWN, Nodonn flew over the battlefield with Imidol and Kuhal and Culluket, studying the dismal results of the first round of the High Mêlée. The nearly full moon was setting and the stars shone dim. In keeping with their mood, the four brothers had dulled their own metapsychic illumination and rode the sky like wraiths.
Firvulag medics, firefly lanterns bobbing, were busy among the masses of dark bodies. Over in their camp was a great circle of bonfires signaling a warriors' collation in progress. The Little People were singing a loud polyphonic chant, punctuated by throbbing drums.
"I don't recall hearing that one," Imidol remarked.
"One of their fight songs," Kuhal said sourly. "The kind they sang when they used to win every other Combat back in the days when you were still clinging to Mother's skirts and learning to coerce black beetles. The song's a victory lay, actually. Let's hope it's premature."
"That they should dare to voice it at all—!" Culluket's face blazed momentarily crimson.
"We're not even behind in the banner tally," Imidol protested. "It was a shame about Velteyn, but Celadeyr of Afaliah can take over his Creator Battalion."
"What's left of it," Kuhal snarled.
The Battlemaster had offered no observation. Now he led them lower, to a large area where the scarlet-and-violet glow of Tanu agents of succor had concentrated. He said, "Velteyn was an impetuous fool to underestimate Pallol. He of all our battle-captains should have known the new mood of the Foe. And do not minimize the disaster, Youngest Brother! The ranks of the creators have been reduced by fully one-quarter of their number—and Celadeyr is not one of the Host."
Culluket was a shade too neutral. "Well, it was your idea to have Mercy designate Vel as Second Creator. I warned you about his impaired judgmental outlook."
"And now," the truculent Kuhal appended, "our late brother of Finiah overlooks the Firvulag revels! Doubtless from empty, gold-socketed eyes."
"We have two more rounds," Imidol said, radiating confidence. "This fiasco with the gray-torc cavalry was a fluke. We'll bounce back."
"The Skin pavilions are overflowing," Culluket warned.
"I've been considering that," said Nodonn. "The most seriously wounded Tanu and human golds will have to be transferred to the healing rooms up in Redact House so that the field medics can devote their skills to patching up the battleworthy. We will undertake a second innovation as well. Culluket—you will farspeak the Lord Healer a
nd instruct him to begin admitting the best of the fighting grays to the Skin. The wounded incompetents of our own race must resign themselves to sitting out the rest of the Combat in Muriah. We'll have no time for aging has-beens and bunglers in this war."
"Tana's teeth, Brother!" Kuhal exclaimed. "Thaggy will supernova if you go against tradition like that!"
Nodonn was adamant. "Our customs can stand a little bending. We have more to worry about than the injured pride of traditionalists—or even the Kingly honor. I admit now that I made a serious mistake putting Velteyn in a position of command. I was moved by sentiment, and you saw how popular his designation was at the time."
"Celadeyr is a good leader, even if he isn't of the Host," Kuhal said. "But we've lost a sure High Table candidate in Velteyn, and we'll have to look sharp from now on ... And I'm talking to you, Youngest Brother!"
Imidol blustered, "I'll take care of Leyr when the time's ripe! You just watch your own psychokinetic ass, Brother!"
The eastern sky was deep violet. Venus hung over the gunmetal smoothness of the lagoon.
"This day," Nodonn told the three, "we must all take great care. The battalions will be fragmenting as the pressure of battle builds and the Firvulag Great Ones emerge to do personal combat. With so many grays and creators gone, we are even further outnumbered—but we still have the advantage in total mindpower. When you take to the field yourselves, be more prudent than our luckless brother, Velteyn. He erred in trying to gather outguild fighters to his personal banner too early by means of spectacular but foolhardy tactics. He gambled and lost. But let me remind you that there is another gambler fighting amongst our ranks ... and he is playing a masterclass game for the highest possible stakes."
The four brothers talked over technicalities for some time after that, letting their steeds drift in the dawning. Down below, the Plain was being cleared rapidly. Firvulag dead were loaded into special coracles on the lagoon strand, to be immolated on the water during the return journey of the Little People to the mainland of Europe. The headless Tanu and human bodies were shrouded and stacked beneath the glass box of the Great Retort, where they would fuel the distillation of the imprisoned in the ultimate Combat offering of life and death.
***
For a hundred years, the eggs of the brine shrimp and the spores of minute algae had waited for rain.
Safe beneath the cracked saline crust of the playa, they had husbanded their tiny portions of life-force, resisting heat and drought and chemical action until yet another extraordinary once-in-a-century rainstorm should drench the Pliocene Betic Cordillera, swell the Proto-Andarax River, and fill the Great Brackish Marsh to overflowing.
Then for a few short weeks the thousands of square kilometers of dry lakebeds that lay between the normal western boundaries of the marsh and the gentle Alboran Rise would burst into teeming life. The brine shrimp and the algae and a few other hardy aquatic forms would thrive until the waters drained and evaporated away, leaving fresh eggs and spores entombed in the sediment to await the next Hundred-Year Storm.
No rain fell. The Pliocene sky of early November was clear and the bed of the Andarax carried only a thin trickle from the Spanish heights into the basin of the Mediterranean.
Nevertheless, the playa filled. The water spread and deepened in a manner unprecedented.
Brine shrimp hatched by the billions, ate algae, and hastened to lay the softer-shelled eggs that they produced in a well-watered environment. The water was muddier than usual and it harbored alien competitors, oceanic plankton that vied with the shrimp for the drifting greenery and even tried to prey upon the little crustaceans themselves. But the creatures of the playa had no true awareness of that, nor of the fact that they would never have to endure the long drought-sleep again.
***
"Trust me!" said Aiken Drum, amid the fire, smoke, mind-bellowing, and carnage.
"If this doesn't work," Bunone Warteacher told him, "there's a good chance that Nukalavee will nail you."
Aiken jabbed his saucy banner skyward. "Fear not! Just keep your fewkin' illusions intact and see that none of the gang here tries any heroic chivalrous bullshit to louse up the ambush. You hear me talkin', Tagan baby?"
The Lord of Swords said dryly, "We are so menaced by the Foe that I will bow to any expedient giving promise of reprieve. Even to you, Aiken Drum."
"Attaboy, Coercive Brother! Look sharp, then. I'm off!"
The golden figure on the magnificent charger vanished in a puff of purple smoke.
Lord Daral of Bardelask said, "Have confidence, Lord of Swords. Aiken has led us with brave ingenuity all this day. We have more than twoscore of the Firvulag battle standards through following his banner—as well as the head of their hero, Bles Four-Fang!"
"Lying in ambush isn't our way," grumbled Tagan.
"It's a way to win," Bunone shot back. "You old soldiers give me a pain in the—heads up!"
Out of the dusty imbroglio surrounding the six depleted Tanu companies emerged a new sound—an infuriated roar from more than a thousand throats, carrying over it a whistling squeal that reminded the human fighters of a kind of Brobdingnagian electronic feedback. In an instant, all of the five hundred or so mounted knights disappeared, transformed into piles of miscellaneous corpses lying on both sides of a fairly clear corridor perhaps thirty meters in width and nearly ten times as long.
"The illusion is firm," Celadeyr told them. "And now—en garde!"
Into the cleared area came galloping a hipparion, one of the donkey-sized three-toed horses of the Pliocene Epoch. It was bridled and plumed and caparisoned with purple and gold garniture. Standing upon its back, waving a small-sized version of his digitus impudicus banner and laughing like a maniac, was Aiken Drum. He was wearing his golden suit of many pockets.
Charging hot on his trail was a legion of monsters, Firvulag stalwarts clad in their most fearsome illusions, led by a towering apparition resembling a centaur from which the skin had been flayed. Its raw muscles and sinews and red and blue blood vessels glistened and throbbed; the eyeballs started from its skull in frenzied rage; a lipless mouth with broken tusks gaped as it voiced its appalling scream. Nukalavee the Skinless, one of the premier Firvulag champions, pursued the small figure on horseback, flinging lightning balls that hit some invisible metapsychic barrier around the fleeing jester and exploded into harmlessness.
"Nyaa-nyaa!" cried Aiken Drum.
The hipparion galloped flat out. The youth bent to peer backwards through his legs and stick his tongue out at Nukalavee, clinging to the reins with one hand and flourishing his midget banner with the other. Then he dropped the flap of his golden suit.
Nukalavee's feedback howl soared to a hundred and ten decibels. The trampling Firvulag mob came to be entirely encompassed by the twin lines of corpses.
Bunone and Alberonn and Bleyn gave a simultaneous mental command:
Now.
***
"Wake up, Bryan. Can you hear me? Wake up now."
The dream of darkness began to fade, that cavern swallowing him with sweet and awful finality. He opened his eyes and there were Fred and Mario, the silver-torc redactors who had been his warders. And there was Creyn, now setting aside a small golden censer from which lingering acrid fumes swirled.
"I'm quite all right," Bryan said. (But soon to return to be engulfed.)
The deepset exotic eyes with their flat-blue pupils were very close to him. "Tana be thanked, Bryan. We had feared for you."
Good old Creyn was concerned. But why? She had promised to come for him.
"You have been asleep for three days, Bryan."
"It doesn't matter, really."
"No," the Tanu healer replied in gentle agreement. "I suppose it doesn't. But you must rise and prepare yourself now. Mario and Frederic will help you dress appropriately. It's time for you to leave Redact House. In an hour, after the sun sets, we will have the second Recess Before Night. There is to be a gathering of the entire Tanu battle-company in extr
aordinary conclave. You are summoned to the White Silver Plain."
Bryan managed a slight smile. "Another command performance before Their Awful Majesties? I should think they'd have ... more diverting entertainment these days than the likes of me."
"You are summoned by Nodonn," Creyn said. He extended one bony hand all covered with rings and lightly touched the fingers of the still recumbent anthropologist. "You have no torc and so I cannot reach you in the fullness of fellowship, nor heal you even if it were allowed, or possible. You are unaware of what you have done, and in Tana's mercy you may never know. So go, Bryan. Receive your last gift. Goodbye."
Bryan's wondering gaze followed the exotic man to the door of the suite. And then Creyn was gone and Fred and Mario were helping him into the sumptuous bathroom.
***
"They weren't listening to me!" Bewildered, Thagdal sank back into his throne.
The banqueting pavilion was a turmoil of conflicting thoughts and shouts. Nobody was sitting formally at table any more; they were jumping up on top of them to deliver impromptu harangues; or gathered around this champion or that, consuming heroic quantities of liquor as they debated and quarreled about the remarkable events of the day, the Tanu comeback in the face of lengthening odds and what—or who—had been responsible for it.
"I thought it was a lovely speech, dear," Nontusvel assured him. "Setting differences aside and all working together. What could be more logical?"
The King only gave a hollow laugh and drank from his gilded-skull goblet. Morosely, he stared into the inset carbuncle eyes.
"Remember this good old boy? Maglarn Wrinkle-Meat. Ugliest mother's son of the whole Firvulag tribe, and a fighting fool. I finally zapped him through the gizzard after we'd walloped each other for three mortal hours in the Heroic Encounters. Now that was Combat! None of this hole-in-a-corner sneaking around and dirty tricks. But now—! The Foe fights dirty, and so do we. And unless some miracle supervenes, the dirtiest trickster of the lot will end up King of the Many-Colored Land."