“Yes,” The nun’s tone was desolate.
Elizabeth began to move along the balcony, with Amerie following. They came to the eastern side of the chalet Lac Provençal was an azure expanse fading to slate near the horizon. The storm would come from that direction.
“Do you remember Culluket, the King’s Interrogator?” Elizabeth asked.
“I saw him only once. After our strike at the torc works failed and we were captured—he was the one who clapped gray slave-torcs on us and sent us away to die in prison. Yes, I remember the Interrogator. He wore glowing red-glass armor and he was the most beautiful Tanu male I’ve ever seen.”
“He look Felice and tortured her.”
“Oh, Jesus”
“He worked her over quite a bit more than was necessary to extract information. Dionket told me about it during the evacuation. As the head of the Redactor Guild, Dionket knew what Cull was up to—but there was no way Dionket could interfere in the private affairs of the Host. The torture—the algesis—is what forced Felice into metapsychic operancy and enabled her to take a full measure of vengeance. According to her lights.” Elizabeth paused “Cull’s handiwork also seems to have forged some perverse link between the two of them. That’s why she looks for him, keeps calling his name on the declamatory mode. Felice isn’t sure that her dear torturer survived the Flood. Unfortunately, I am. Cull is alive, and he’s gone to Goriah, where he hopes Aiken will be able to protect him from Felice. God help Cull if she ever tracks him down.”
The physician warred with the lover in Amerie; momentarily, the professional won. “Yes, I see what you mean. Felice’s character is profoundly sadomasochistic, of course. The Interrogator gave her not only terrible pain but also the mental power she’d been searching for all her life. No wonder she loves him…
Elizabeth said nothing.
“What—what’s to be done about Felice.’’ “Her powers—! My God, not even Saint Jack the Bodiless or Diamond Mask could have blasted out that Gibraltar cut! Not single-minded.”
“Felice hasn’t used her destructive power since the deluge. Perhaps she can’t. Most of the time, she imagines that she’s a black scavenger bird. She gathers golden torcs and hides them. I don’t know where. She’s very clever at screening, except when she calls to Cull.”
The women stood side by side at the railing, Elizabeth in her long black gown and tall Amerie in a white coverall with a clerical rabat and dog collar at the neck. A breeze had begun to stir the dark firs that crowded close to the lodge’s isolated knoll. A rock thrush, invisible, gave plaintive warning of changing weather.
“Could you help Felice with your deep-redact faculty?” Amerie asked. “Cure the psychosis?”
“Possibly. If she gave full cooperation. But it might be safer to let her stay as she is, if it means restraining her use of the psychoenergetic functions. This is…one of the matters I have to think deeply about.”
The nun drew back, looking at the other with dawning horror. Elizabeth only smiled, resigned. Amerie said, “You’ll have to decide so many things.”
Elizabeth lifted a wry shoulder. She had turned so that the priest could not see her face. “It’s cold and lonesome on Olympus.”
Amerie said. “If only I could help If any of us could—!”
Elizabeth’s hands were clutching the wooden rail, the tendons white “You can do one thing. Again. For the sake of my scruples.”
“Yes, Of course.”
From one pocket of her coverall Amerie took a narrow violet ribbon, kissed it, and hung it about her neck like a yoke. She recited the ancient formula again—as she had recited it for the sleeper wakened in the mountain sanctuary where they had watched the Flood; as she had recited it on countless nights during the long exodus while Elizabeth wept along with the winter rain pounding their improvised shelter.
“Only believe it. Elizabeth.”
“I try.” I try.
Amerie blessed the head still turned away “Come, child of God, and lay your burden down. For he has said to his Church. ‘Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them.’”
“Bless me. Sister, for I have sinned.”
“Let the person who is thirsty come. Let whoever wants it accept the gift of the water of life.”
“I confess pride I confess hubris, the sin of surpassing arrogance. I confess blasphemy of the healing Spirit. I confess contempt for lesser minds. I confess refusing love to other rational beings. I confess despair. I confess the unforgivable sin and ask forgiveness. I am sorry. Help me to believe it! Help me to believe that there’s a God who forgives the unforgivable.”
Help me believe that I’m not alone.
Help me!
6
THE BIG WILD CHALIKO WAS TEARING UP THE SQUEZE CHUTE with his claws, screeching and blowing, flinging his massive barrel against the stout wooden planks until the spikes fastening them seemed about to give way. There were four gray-torc wranglers trying to hold him—two on the hackamore longeline and two on a foot rope. They were broadcasting sheer panic when Benjamin Barrett Travis led the three Exalted Ones over to the corral to watch the breaking.
“You really gonna face down that clawfoot killer, Brazos?” Aiken Drum inquired, awestricken. “Sweet houghmagandy!”
The penned chaliko reared up on its unfettered hind leg and gave a ringing bellow. It was a blue roan standing at least twenty hands, with black fetlock feathering and mane and a startling black-rimmed walleye.
“Tana’s left tit!” blasphemed Alberonn Mindeater. “It’s as big as a rhino!”
Brazos Ben fingered his silver torc. The chaliko settled back into the chute with a wooof! “Hell, he ain’t near as snorty as some wild ones I’ve suppled out. He ain’t even mean by nature. Just scared.”
“Travis is quite right,” said the Interrogator “The animal’s mind is awash with profound fear. The bridling device, the equipment affixed to its feet, the saddle—these, combined with its loss of freedom and the presence of people, have nearly driven it insane. Only its natural intelligence, and the fact that it has not actually been hurt, restrain it from suicidal violence.”
Brazos Ben smiled thinly at the redactor. “And don’t you forget I been talkin’ to him for a week, Lord Cull. You saw how he eased back when I give him a farsqueak Chalikos are smarter’n horses at recognizin’ a friendly mind.”
“Then why not. Just mind-bend the beast to tame it?” Alberonn wanted to know. “Why go through all this ride-’em-cowboy physical tosh?”
“A chaliko’s gotta be broke both ways, Lord Alby. Otherwise he’s only good for gold or silver riders. No gray or bareneck could even touch him. After a chaliko’s been suppled and trained to the usual body and voice commands, then he gets mind-broke. Course, I speak to my critters all along the way, even in the physical schoolin’. But with my method, you can train up twenty times the wild stock you could mind-bendin’—and take less time doin’ it. You can use gray and bareneck trainers steada silvers right up until the final postgrad telepathic autopilot programmin’. It’s a little different trainin’ domesticated beasts. Easier. “But the Battlemaster,”— Brazos Ben broke off, eyeing Aiken—”I mean, the late Battlemaster wanted Goriah to be the best-mounted outfit in the Many-Colored Land come Combat time. And that meant usin’ plenty o’ wild stock.”
Across the corral, the chaliko neighed. Brazos Ben extracted a small tin of snuff from his breast pocket and tucked a pinch behind his cheek. “Well, you Exalteds ready for some action?”
“Sic ’em, BB!” Aiken chortled.
The breaker went off to the chute while Aiken, Culluket the Interrogator, and Alberonn Mindeater approached the fence of the round enclosure and found a spot that was not too muddy. Although it was not raining, the sky was dark and louring and a cold wind blew in from the Strait of Redon beyond the stables. The three men wore traditional Tanu storm-suits of colored leather with peaked capuchons and over-knee boots. Aiken’s suit was gold with black piping, the Interrogator’s deep
red, and Alberonn’s turquoise to indicate his status as a creator coercer. Alberonn’s human heritage showed in his chocolate skin, which was a sinking foil to his green Tanu eyes and the bush of fleecy blond hair that escaped from his hood. The hybrid High Table member was half a head taller than Culluket and towered over diminutive Aiken like a fairytale giant.
“My late brother Nodonn counted this man Travis as one of the most valued of all his servants,” Culluket remarked. Across the corral, Brazos supervised the removal of the hind-foot hobble.
“I wish we had fifty more like him,” Aiken said. “Getting large numbers of trained mounts will be critical to my strategy against the Firvulag. At least, until I track down those aircraft.”
“It’s a bad sign that the Little People have chucked their old prejudice against riding,” Culluket said.
Aiken nodded. “One of my spies reported that they’re even trying to domesticate those little hipparions for the gnomies to ride! And we know they’ve been stealing tame chalikos from all the outlying plantations around the eastern cities for the warrior-ogre battalions.”
Alberonn said, “Bleyn farspoke me that the same thing is going on down around Rocilan. Raids, sneak attacks, ambushes. All blamed on Howlers, of course. But the situation is getting beyond makeshift countermeasures down there in Candy City. The petty lordlings and the torced humans just aren’t responding to Bleyn’s leadership, not even when Lady Eadnar commands it. Bleyn’s an outsider, even if he is her brother-in-law, and he has no authority. Dammit, Aiken—! I’ve a good mind to go down and marry Eadnar now, not wait until the Grand Loving in May!”
“You cannot. Creative Brother,” said the Interrogator. “It would be even more inflammatory than Bleyn’s action. Old Lady Morna-Ia is mulish about respecting the mourning period for her late son. She thinks that even May is too soon for a wedding.”
Alberonn was glum. “I should have let the old bat drown. But there she was on the floating wreckage with Eadnar—so what could I do?”
“Here comes trouble,” Aiken observed, poking his head through the corral bars. The wranglers were opening the chute. Brazos Ben, chewing meditatively, now held the longe-line in his left hand and another rope, attached in some complex fashion to the chaliko’s front ankles, in his right. The animal skittered out into the heavy mud, its walleye rolling and its prancing claws making loud squushing sounds.
“What the hell’s that rig on its feel?” Alberonn asked. “I thought Ben was going to ride the beast.”
“Shut up and watch,” ordered Aiken.
Brazos Ben was no longer soothing the chaliko’s mind through his silver torc. In fact, he seemed to be deliberately provoking the creature to misbehavior, tugging sharply on the hackamore line. The animal’s flanks began to heave. Its neck twitched and its head strained. Just as Ben maneuvered it to the center of the corral, it exploded into a frenzy of bucking. The stirrup-pieces of the big, chairlike saddle slapped against its withers. Mud flew to the four winds and Aiken hastily slammed up a PK shield.
Now Ben carefully drew in the foot line, which ran from the right side of the saddle down through a ring on the right ankle hobble, up through a pulley at the cinch, down to the left hobble, up over me high stirrup plate, and out to the breaker. “BB calls it a running W,” Aiken said. “You gotta use it right, or you ruin the chaliko. But it really puts the fear o’ God into uppish brutes.”
With the line tightened, the huge chaliko perforce fell to its knees in the muck. Ben held him there, talking softly and making a clucking sound. He rubbed the creature on both sides of its neck but didn’t try to catch its panicked eye. After a few minutes, he slacked off the W-line and let the chaliko rise. Still speaking to it, he urged it to begin walking with a gentle tug on the longe. The chaliko reared, shrieking, and gathered itself to run; but before it could step out, Ben pulled the W-line. Once again the big animal stumbled slowly to its knees, sinking deeply into black ooze.
“Now Travis is back in the beast’s mind,” Culluket said, admiration brightening the somber beauty of his face. “Telling it who the master is—but gently. See? The animal responds.
It’s no fool. But it’s going to try to break loose again, just to be sure.”
The procedure was repeated, with Brazos Ben now humming tunelessly as he managed to have the chaliko move a dozen obedient steps at the end of the longe-line before it erupted into defiant bucking and claw-slashing. Ben spat tobacco juice and tipped the animal ignominiously into the slop. Hunching down, he massaged the chaliko’s face, remonstrating and clucking. The skinned-back ears turned forward and the corded neck muscles relaxed. Ben let the big roan up, flicked the longe and stood with a satisfied smile as it trotted slowly around him, responding now to the command of the hackamore. And the dry thought came;
He’s all broke, Exalteds.
They gave him a heartfelt Slonshal!. The trainer motioned to one of his assistants to take over the two ropes, stood for a few minutes probing the chaliko’s mind to insure that it plotted no more deviltry, then waded out of the soupy corral back to Aiken, Culluket, and Alberonn.
“You won’t ride him today, then?” the hybrid asked, disappointed.
“I could, usin’ the W. But I’d rather not. Those claws can cut a rope too easy at a trot. All he really needed was to figger out who was boss. A few days now to get him halter-wise and we’ll start ridin’. I don’t think this baby’ll need any more hobbles.”
“Terrific work, BB!” said Aiken.
“I presume you handled livestock back on Elder Earth,” said Alberonn.
Benjamin Barren Travis spat politely over his shoulder. “Hell, no. Lord Alby. Wouldn’t I’ve loved to, though! Naw—I inherited my daddy’s desk as comptroller of Westex Foodex of El Paso, the biggest exporter of Hispano-American food stuffs in the Milieu.” His pale eyes twinkled. “Never want to see another retried bean long ’s I live…” He hitched up his jeans. “I plan to mosey over’n’ begin mind-breakin’ a really top-notch white stallion, lords. Y’all wanta help? If you ride longside, it reinforces the programmin’.”
“Sounds great!” Alberonn enthused.
“You go on with Ben, Alby,” Aiken said. “Cull and I have some things to discuss. “To the breaker he said, “You come on up to the Castle of Glass for supper tonight, BB. And bring Sally Mac.”
“Right y’are, Battlemaster.” With a casual wave, the man in the mud-caked Levis ambled off in the company of the titan warrior, reminiscing telepathically over ornery steeds he had known.
“Commander Congreve just farspoke me.” Aiken told the Interrogator “There’s a whackin’ big batch of recruits just arrived, and you and me better get back to check ’em out. Thirty-eight Tanu and nearly a hundred humans—including twelve golds and a gang of silver technicians. Most of ’em are from Afaliah Old Celadeyr has instigated some kind of purge—thrown out all his human executives and managing technicians, and made things so hot for the hybrid aristocracy that they fled lock, stock, and barrel.”
“I’ll find out soon enough what’s going on down there.”
“The rest of the arrivals are from that Spanish town the Craftsmaster took over. Calamosk.”
“Bleeding Goddess. They’d be cravens from the Retort—the riff-raff scheduled to be executed at the end of the Combat! You’d accept such trash?”
Aiken’s beady gaze was cold “Bull me no shit, Pretty-Face. It’s all a new deal in this Many-Colored Land. You forget? And once upon a time, I was considered a bit riff-rafry myself. . .Let’s fly.”
They pulled down the transparent face-shields of their capuchons and soared into the air. Little splatters of rain ticked against their moving bodies. They flew over the chaliko farm, which was north of Goriah alongside the strait, crossed orchards, olive groves, and gardens, and approached the city itself.
Goriah was built upon a great rise and covered nearly four square kilometers. Most of the buildings, except the magnificent central citadel and certain dwellings of the Great Ones,
were built of cleanly whitewashed stone roofed in rose-red tile.
The mansions of the Tanu were adorned with spires and filigree buttresses of rose and gold, honoring the Psychokmetic Guild heraldry of the late Nodonn. Formerly, the glass castle had featured the same color scheme; but since the coming of the usurper, most of the rosy elements had been stripped away and replaced with accents of jet-black or midnight-purple, these unique tinctures having been adopted by the new Battlemaster. At night, every dwelling of the commonalty was picked out in a myriad of small oil lamps strung along roofs and garden walls. The Tanu structures were completely outlined in metaactivated faerie lights of many different colors, and the Castle of Glass blazed golden and amethyst—brighter than it had ever shone during Nodonn’s tenure—a beacon visible all the way to the disemboguement of the River Laar 30 kilometers away.
As the two levitants descended toward the main receiving area near the eastern city gate, Aiken observed, “Commander Congreve has discovered a really big human gold in the net today. His name is Sullivan-Tonn, originally from Finiah on the River Rhine. Ever heard of him?”
The Interrogator blasphemed lundly “That fat funk-pisser! If he’d only used his powers as a warrior should, Finiah might have withstood Guderian’s attack! Do I know him—!’’ And the data were spread out for Aiken to study.
Aloysius X Sullivan, yclept Sullivan-Tonn Ninety-six years old, rejuvenated, resident in the Pliocene nearly thirty-two years. Once Küng Professor of Moral Theology at Fordham University, and later a highly placed supervising psychokinetic under Lord Velteyn of Finiah. Tonn’ s primary metafunction was enormous (he was capable of levitating forty people or nearly five tons of inert matter), but his usefulness to the Tanu was limited by his pacifism, which masked an invincible timidity. He was notorious for having refused point-blank to use his PK in Grand Combats, Hunts, or any other aggressive activity, but he had performed his other duties faithfully. After the fall of Finiah, he assisted in the aerial evacuation of noncombatants and ultimately made his way to Castle Gateway, which was then being used as a relief center for refugees. When the deluge came, Tonn was safely ensconced in the small Spanish city of Calamosk, attendant upon his teenaged Tanu fiancée Lady Olone, who had been forced to miss the Grand Combat because she was recuperating in Skin, having broken her back in an ill-considered attempt to fly on her own. Olone, a luscious honey-blonde and a coercer of formidable raw talent, had accompanied Tonn to Goriah.