“Teeth?” said Yosh blankly. “I never got close enough to a Firvulag female to look one in the mouth. What’s special about their teeth?”
Sunny Jim looked away, abashed.
Vilkas gave a bark of mirthless laughter. “Not regular teeth, slaunch-eyes.” He glared meaningfully at Yosh for a moment, then whispered, “Other teeth. Down there.”
“Ah.” The ronin smiled coolly. “I can see how that would cramp your style. You don’t look like the type to ask politely. Or get many offers of free samples.”
A serving lad materialized at Yosh’s elbow and began to unload a tray. There was a platter of big broiled ribs coated with pungent sauce, a bowl of something smelling like oyster stew, a loaf of purple-tinted bread, and an enormous tankard of beer. As a final touch the waiter set down a saucer filled with tiny mushrooms, the caps scarlet with white flecks.
Yosh reached out. “What’s this? The appetizer?”
A hairy hand clamped his wrist. “Go easy on those hoobies, slaunch-eyes. Firvulag get high on ’em, but they’ll send a human to hell faster ’n’ methyl alcohol.” Vilkas released his grip with insolent slowness. “Unless cheap fungo trips are your style.” He scowled at the waiter. “More beer, dammit!”
Sunny Jim ventured a conciliatory smile. “Aw, Vilkas. Hey! Why’n’cha stash that crap?” His eyes appealed to Yosh. “Vilkas don’t mean nothin’. He’s just a li’l squiffed from too much spook beer. Past month’s been mighty rough on him. He was in Burask when the Howlers tore the town to pieces, and before that—”
“Shut up, Jim,” said Vilkas. His beer arrived and he downed a liter without pausing for breath.
Yosh regarded Vilkas without passion. “Kampai!” he toasted, taking a swallow of the brew. “Ah, Burask. I missed the festivities, worse luck. But a week or so afterward I did meet up with a party of Tanu fleeing the city.” He began to spoon up the oyster slew. It was fit for the Galactic. Gourmet.
Jim’s eyes bugged. “Holy blue shit, guy! What happened?”
“Their offensive mind-powers were weak. I decapitated two. The others fled. Unfortunately, the golden torcs of the vanquished were damaged by my sword. But I did acquire a fine chaliko for my efforts.”
“Lucky bastard,” muttered Vilkas through the suds. “Lucky slaunch-eyed friggerty bastard. You wanna know what my luck’s been?”
Jim interrupted what was evidently a familiar tirade. “And now you’re on your way to Goriah, are you?” At Yosh’s nod, he exclaimed, “Hey! So are we! When the word come that this human who wants to be king was passin’ out gold collars—why, I like to busied my butt hittin’ the trail outa the home swamp! And ol’ Vilkas ... well, he didn’t need that much persuadin’ to come along after Burask.”
“And Finiah before that!” shouted the man who wore the blouse of a gray trooper. “I escaped the soddin’ Lowlives after they barenecked me, but the Tanu at Burask treated me like a traitor! Never have any luck. Not here—not back ’n the Milieu. Lithuanians just born stone losers. Wouldn’ even give us our own planet! Hell—even fuckin’ Albanians got a planet, but not us. Y’know what the highass Concilium told us Lithuanians? ‘Go colonize a Cosmop world!’ Said we di’n have nuff ethnic dynamism, f’chrissake. So we could go share a planet with a lot of lousy Letts and Costa Ricans and Sikkimese!” He choked down the last of his beer and slumped forward, head on the stained tableboards. “Bloody Yanks got twelve planets. Bloody Japs got nine. But nothin’ for the poor Lithuanians.” He began to sob.
“Aw, Vilkas,” said Sunny Jim. “Hey—come on.”
Yosh considered the precious pair. They weren’t much to look at, but even a couple of scruffy ashigaru would give him greater face than if he arrived at Goriah unattended. He had enough extra gear to fix them up. The boy could manage the string of hawk kites while the reprobate soldier bore the standard and the mesh bag with the Tanu heads.
‘The track between here and Goriah is still somewhat hazardous,” Yosh said. “You can come along with me tomorrow. Jim, if you like, Vilkas, too. All I’d ask is that you carry a few of my things.”
“Hey, that’s damn nice of you, guy!” Sunny Jim was jubilant. “No spook gonna mess with us if we stick close to you and that iron sword! Isn’t that a great idea, Vilkas?”
The greasy head lifted. “Super.” The bloodshot gaze fixed on Yosh had become horribly sober. “What did you say your name was, slaunch-eyes?”
Yosh put down the rib he had been chewing and smiled, as if at a peevish child.
“You can call me Yoshi-sama.” he said.
10
THE RECEPTION PARTY WAITED ON THE GORIAH QUAY AS THE ship from Rocilan was slowly warped into its slip.
All the sable banners emblazoned with Lord Aiken-Lugonn’s impudent golden finger hung sodden in the thin rain. The aristocratic riders on their elaborately caparisoned mounts were quite drenched; but Mercy had warned Aiken against tampering with the elements today, even in the interests of hospitality. Screening off the rain—or indeed any extraordinary manifestation of metapsychic prowess—would be a solecism in Tanu eyes, marking the kingly aspirant as deficient in humility.
The gray-torc docking crew wrestled an ornamental gang-way into position, in a fine show of pageantry, Aiken’s new company of gold foot soldiers took up honor-guard formation. their gleaming brass-and-black-glass half-armor looking all the more resplendent for the sparkling drops of water beading it. Flunkies brought a mounting stool to the foot of the ramp. Alberonn Mindeater himself led forward four white chalikos for the disembarking guests.
On board the ship, a single horn note sounded. Several Tanu ladies in Aiken’s train raised their glass carnices and responded with a fanfare. Eadnar, widow of the late Lord Gradlonn of Rocilan, began to descend the gangplank, followed by her venerable mother-in-law Lady Morna-Ia, her sister Tirone Heartsinger, and Tirone’s husband Bleyn the Champion.
Aiken doffed his golden hat with its dripping black plume, levitated discreetly until he stood full upright on his saddle, and threw wide his arms in a gesture of welcome.
“Slonshal!” cried the mind and voice of the diminutive usurper of Goriah, and the power of his utterance made the rocky harbor walls reverberate “Slonshal!” he said again, reaching out to join Mercy’s greeting with his own as the visitors mounted the waiting chalikos. And “Slonshail!” he roared for the third time, making the ship’s sails billow and the gulls rise up from all the piers and pilings like a confetti cloud of gray and pink and white. From the throats and minds of those assembled on the quay came the haunting strains of the Tanu Song, its melody so strangely familiar to the exiles of the twenty-second century.
Li gan nol po’kône niési,
’Kône o lan li pred néar,
U taynel compn la neyn,
Ni blepan algar dedône.
Shompri pône. a gabrinel,
Shal u car metan presi,
Nar metan u bor taynel o pogekône,
Car metan sed gône mori
There is a land that shines through life and time,
A comely land through the length of the world’s age,
And many-colored blossoms fall on it,
From the old trees where the birds are singing.
Every color glows there, delight is commonplace,
Music abounds on the Silver Plain,
On the Gentle-Voiced Plain of the Many-Colored Land,
On the White Silver Plain to the south.
There is no weeping, no treachery, no grief,
There is no sickness, no weakness, no death.
There are riches, treasures of many colors,
Sweet music to hear, the best of wine to drink.
Golden chariots contend on the Plain of Sports,
Many-colored steeds run in days of lasting weather.
Neither death nor the ebbing of the tide
Will come to those of the Many-Colored Land.
The honored guests from Rocilan joined in the singing; but at the last verse, bereaved
Alberonn and Eadnar wept openly, and old Lady Morna’s seamed visage hardened into a mask of grief, and Mercy’s mind-voice lost its music and keened instead the Celtic lament, Ochone, ochone!
They all fell silent. The seabirds drifted back to their resting places. The harbor waters were dead calm, a rain-pocked leaden sheet.
Aiken said, “Welcome, Most Exalted Ones of Rocilan.” His mind declaimed: “The laughter and the joy will come again—and the love and the sport and the many-colored treasures of the heart. The Shining One promises it!”
Lady Morna-Ia peered at him sharply. “You are shorter of stature in person than your farseen image hints, Battlemaster. And much younger.”
“I’ll be twenty-two years old on the day before the Grand Loving. Farseeing Lady,” said the rogue. “On my home world, Dalriada, I’d already be four years into my majority. And old enough for elected office if my fellow-citizens hadn’t banished me as a menace to the public welfare!”
Morna’s subvocalization was still mentally audible: Understandable.
“As for my size,” he added, smirking, “I was quite big enough for Mayvar Kingmaker, your late guild-sister.” She bridled dangerously at the innuendo, but he swept on “And if the Flood hadn’t interrupted my duel with Nodonn, I’d have cut him down to size, too.”
“So you say,” the lady retorted. “Lofty talk seems to be a commodity in long supply about Goriah this time of the year. That, and the flouting of sacred tradition.” Her glance fell on her widowed daughter-in-law, Eadnar, communing wordlessly with Alberonn, who still held the bridle of her chaliko. “It is your shameless example, Battlemasler, presuming to affiance yourself to Mercy-Rosmar in defiance of our mourning customs, that has led Eadnar to profane my late son’s memory.”
Aiken shifted elocutional gears abruptly, abolishing any hint of saucy bravado and speaking to the older woman on the intimate telepathic mode with all of the earnest charm he could conjure:
Farseeing Lady Morna-Ia, you’re a First Comer—a pillar of your guild, a person of great wisdom as well as metapsychic strength. You’re aware of the danger we face, with so many of the battle-company having perished in the Flood. The Foe is poised to take advantage of any show of weakness now that they outnumber us, and they will not scruple to go against tradition if it will hasten our downfall! Consider the so-called Howler attack that devastated Burask, in which the invaders made unprecedented use of bows and arrows. And the skirmishes in the alpine foothills around Bardelask where ogres and imps have been seen mounted on chalikos and hipparions, in contravention of their most ancient custom!
The Foe are planning to pick off, one by one, those cities that have lost their strong lords and fighting ladies. Even Rocilan, on the Atlantic coast and a protectorate of Goriah, is vulnerable to the Fuvulag of the Grotto Wilderness. The lovely Eadnar is a creative genius in textiles and the confectionery arts—but she is hardly the person to undertake the defense of your city against a well-armed force of mounted monsters! This is why, at my insistence, Alberonn Mindeater has pressed his suit in spite of your mourning customs. You know he’s eminently qualified. Why—it’s to Rocilan’s honor that it be governed by a High Tabler, and a fighting specialist, to boot! Add to this the fact that Alberonn saved Eadnar’s life, and your own, in the Flood…
“We owe the Lord Mindeater more than we can repay,” Morna said aloud, stiff-faced. “We welcome him with humility and joy. Nevertheless—”
Aha. I see what you take little trouble to hide! It’s Me you really object to. My meddling in Rocitan affairs. My trampling your tradition. My taking of Goriah and aspiring to be king.
You are a human.
And a rascal! I know. But if you’ll just use your great ultrasenses to look past my sawed-off body and my humanity and my youth and my bragging, naughty ways…you’d see that I’m the very one this kingdom needs now to lead it. I’m the one who can rebuild at the same time that I send the Foe packing! Who believes it? Bleyn and Alberonn do, and follow me now as they did in the last Grand Combat. Mercy-Rosmar, the President of the Creator Guild, has agreed to be my wife. And here’s the Second Redactor, Lord Culluket, come to Goriah just this past month to throw in his lot with the Shining One. Four of the five eligible High Table survivors accept me at my word! Won’t you?
“It’s true what they say about your sly mind and forked tongue. “But the old woman’s face had softened into a wintry smile. “One moment you’re a disingenuous mountebank, and the next—”
“Not all that impossible a candidate for High King.” He giggled, clapped his broad-brimmed golden hat back onto his head, and squinted at the wet plumes that now dripped in front of his eyes. At home on dear, soggy Dalriada, we’d call this a fine soft morning. What say, lady dear, that we take a jaunt of inspection? Just a wee detour on our way to the Castle of Glass? I’d like you and the other Exalted Ones of Rocilan to see all the great things I’ve done, refurbishing the Grove of May for this year’s. Loving. You’ll be amazed.”
“Oh, very well,” said Morna.
The other guests and the members of the welcoming party, who had been mingling and chatting gravely, now felt silent and expectant. Mercy, sitting her white chaliko side saddle took up Aiken’s suggestion as though it were a spur-of-the-moment thing and not something the two of them had planned from the start Psychocreative force streamed from her, and her wild opalescent glance made even the lovely sisters of Rocilan look almost wan in comparison.
“Let’s fly!” Mercy exclaimed, “It’s a grand day for a Faery Rade!” She threw back the hood of her velvet Kinsale cloak, so that her fine auburn hair darkened and coiled in ringlets from the rain. “Away with all you soldiers and attending lords and ladies—we’ll not be needing your company until we return to Goriah. You dear guests, follow me! Fly away! Fly away!”
She mounted aloft into the downpour, leaving Aiken momentarily open-mouthed. This detail of flying had definitely not been planned, and of the others, only Culluket was capable of self-levitation. Aiken would have to carry the four Rocilan guests and Alberonn himself, violating the humility precept. No stigma attached to the pregnant Mercy, who by Tanu custom was permitted any caprice: but she’d put a right one across him.
“What the hell,” Aiken said, shrugging “Up, up and away! I’ll be breaking a whole raft more of your holy fewkin’ rules to save you from the Firvulag, so we might as well wipe the slate of this piece of silliness right now.”
He waggled both hands. The rain slopped falling on the Tanu aristocrats and the trickster, deflected by his psychokinetic power. “If we were on Dalriada,” he said, “we could ride in nice comfy aircraft instead of on these overgrown turnip eaters. But hang tight! I’m working on that little problem, too!”
Effortlessly, he drew them all along with him, the chalikos seeming to canter through the moisture-laden clouds. They caught up quickly with Mercy, who only laughed, and soared eastward over a low range of heavily wooded hills. Beyond them the broad River Laar made a northerly bend before curving down to the Tainted Swamp and its outlet to the Atlantic. A well-graded roadway from Goriah paralleled the river at this point, and it was alive with traffic. Carts drawn by hellads and chaliko caravans brought loads of dressed stone, carved timbers, rolls of sod, and balled-and-burlapped ornamental plant stock into a raw clearing adjacent to the Laar. The eight flying riders swooped low, decelerated to a walking pace, and drifted just above the crowns of big magnolia and black-gum trees. Workers were everywhere down below. Humans, both bare neck and gray torc, supervised gangs of diligent, child-sized ramapithecine apes who dug and raked, cleared and planted, fetched and carried.
This area along the river is all new since Tirone and I were married.” Bleyn remarked. “What’s it going to be, Aiken.”
“A fancy campground for the Firvulag guests. Surprise!”
Bleyn’s jaw dropped. He looked like a thunderstruck Siegfried. Tana’s Teeth, “You can’t invite them!”
“It goes against all precedent!” Morna s
aid “Firvulag would never—”
“They’ve already accepted,” the Shining One interrupted her blithely. “Only the biggies, of course. King Sharn and Queen Ayfa and their close henchfolks. We kept the guest list modest. Two or three hundred with luck they’ll bring presents.”
Tirone Heartsmger protested, “But the Little People always have their own Grand Loving celebration. Tanu and Firvulag join in the Combat, as is proper for Foes. But never in the Loving!”
Aiken said, “The common ruck of Firvulag can do as they please, dear lass. But I have special reasons of state for getting the royals to attend our bash. It’ll be very educational for ’em to see how the Tanu and torced humanity have rallied round Me!”
“If we can be sure that the city-lords will,” Atberonn growled, his mind troubled and showing it clearly.
Aiken now brought the party wafting down. They rode along a broad tanbarked way that wound through the riverside grove. Mercy said, “My Lord Lugonn and I have devoted a lot of thought to this year’s Maying. We’ve been planning all winter long to show the people of the Many Colored Land a Loving such as they’ve never seen before.” Her mind opened to them, showing the work she had done on Elder Earth, where she had directed historical pageants recreating the her itage of medieval Europe for sentimental colonials. The tricks of Mercy’s theatrical trade would lend a fresh and erotic luster to what had been, in Tanu tradition, a charming but rather naive fertility festival. Thanks to Aiken, that polymathic jack-of-all-trades, and to her own expertise as President of the Creators, she had been able to translate her most fantastic designs into reality. No matter that it meant looting Goriah of resources and tying up the city’s labor force for most of the winter and spring: A spectacle had been announced, and would be duly produced.