Four Lords of Diamond - Book 1 (20 page)
O'Higgins recovered quickly, though, and walked back to the still unmoving form of Ti, placing hands again on her head. She nodded to herself, then called for others to bear Ti to one of the huts. As they were carrying out her orders, she turned and walked over to us.
Well, Bronz, your side couldn't do a damned thing, she noted.
Bronz shrugged. You did what was necessary?
I undid what I could, she admitted, but I told you that that butchering bastard was really good and really clever. She'll be all right for a while, though— in fact better than all right, since I had to bypass a lot of Pohri's knots and create alternate routes that might not hold up. There'll be a rush, though—she'll probably feel like she can topple mountains, even though in reality she'll be quite weak until she gets a lot more exercise and regular food, and I fear the repair job won't hold forever.
You mean, I put in, that she'll eventually lapse back into that state?
She nodded. Remember the way the system works, she said. The Warden organisms have a single idea of what is natural. Those with the power can convince Wardens that something else is what they want to do—and that's what Pohn did. Her Wardens want to put her back into that state because he's fooled them into thinking that it's normal. I bypassed the nerve blocks by using parts of the brain not normally used at all, but the Wardens will perceive my meddling as an injury, like a broken arm. They will rush to fix it, put it right. They'll be battling my own work with some localized Wardens, but the barriers will eventually break down. It'll take somebody as expert in cranial medicine
and/or
more powerful than Dr. Pohn to put her completely right, although that could be accomplished in a matter of minutes by such a person.
I frowned. How long, then, will she—wake up?
She shrugged. A few days, maybe a week. No more. It'll go slowly, so there's no sure way to tell.
I groaned in frustration. Then what the hell was the use of all this? Who could really heal her in that length of time?
She looked at me, slightly surprised at my tone. You really care? About a small female?
He cares, Bronz put in, saving me from making nasty comments to my host. He escaped from Zeis and he could have done it a lot easier without bringing her. Instead he's lugged her with him everywhere, fed her, cleaned her—you name it.
She looked at me again, this time nodding slightly, 'and for the first time I felt like I'd attained the status of human being in her eyes. If she means that much to you, she said to me, then perhaps something
can
be done. There's only one place I know of for sure, though, that could do the job, and it's pretty far away.
Moab Keep, Father Bronz added, nodding. I suspected as much. But four thousand kilometers, Sumiko! How in God's name can we possibly get her there in under a year? Let alone Tremon here, who needs to take the full treatment.
She grinned evilly. Not in
God's
name, Augie. But the answer's obvious—we- fly. A
besil
can do three, maybe four hundred kilometers a night, resting days, so we're talking ten days at the outside. That sound a lot more possible?
besils
capable of carrying passengers? .>
I don't—now, she admitted. I expect that if we need
besils,
though, we can get them pretty easily courtesy of Zeis Keep.
I jumped, What!
She shrugged. Either you slipped up somewhere, Augie, or
he
did. It doesn't matter. We're partially surrounded by Zeis troopers right now, and I expect them to come in at sunup, when they can see what they're doing.
I whirled around, staring at the darkness in nervous anticipation. When I realized that neither of the other two seemed in any way concerned by that news, I just grew a little more paranoid about them.
I turned to Father Bronz, who was cocking his head slightly, as if listening for something. Finally he said, How many do you make them?
No more than twenty or thirty, all on
besils,
she responded casually. I'd suppose somebody's gone back ior more, but he's not about to commit more than a fraction of his force. Some of the other knights might get the idea to exploit the weakness and attack Zeis.
Bronz nodded agreement. Then well face no more than forty, a fifth or so of his force. I agree. Okay, forty people at arms, with Artur almost a certainty and, say, two other masters?
She nodded. That's about it.
you,
but they're after the girl and me! You can't fight a force like that! >
Sumiko O'Higgins shook her head slowly in disgust Now, isn't that just like a man! Look, you just go cower someplace and maybe get some sleep and leave the worrying to me.
But—but—they're all highly trained soldiers, all of 'em at least supervisors and with more masters than you've got here! I sputtered. How do you expect to defeat them?
Just don't you worry about it, she replied condescendingly. We—Father Bronz and I—have a lot of work to do between now and dawn. A good thing the God-lovers and we Satanists can get together and agree on one sort of cooperative venture, she added.
Atheists! Pgh!
Father Bronz added, She knows what she's doing, Cal, in his most reassuring tone. If it hadn't been for the under-the-breath addition of I hope to his statement I just might have believed him.
As it was, I just stayed there, not feeling at afl asleep, seeing Master Artur's fierce mustachioed gaze behind every darkness-shielded bush and tree in the jungle.
Needless to say, I got very little sleep that night. Of course nobody in the witch village seemed to sleep at night, although they were all rather expert at
r
ignoring anybody they didn't want to see and I was a non-person in their eyes.
The best I could do was occasionally check on Ti, who when I peeked in for the third or fourth time was not only breathing deeply and regularly, as if in normal sleep, but actually gave out a moan and turned over by herself. That sight alone made this whole business all worthwhile—provided, of course, I lived through the next day.
Although I knew little about witchcraft and remembered less, from the village itself I made a few deductions. Thirteen, the unlucky number because it was the number at the Christians' Last Supper, was natu-
rally a positive number for devil-worshipers. Thirteen women in the coven, then, which explained the num->
:;ber at the ceremony. Thirteen large huts, too, although there were far more than that number living here communally. I never could get an exact count, but I was willing to wager that whatever it was, the number was a multiple of thirteen.
Witch, of course, was a female term. If my old children's stories meant anything, a male witch would be called a warlock, but for some reason you just about never heard about them. They were more mischievous, less powerful, somehow. I remembered that Father Bronz's faith limited the priesthood to males in most cases, which might explain female dominance in Satanism, but it also occurred to me that Dr. Pphn had said that women tended to have more of the power than men, particularly wild talents. I wondered about the hierarchy itself on Lilith now. How many of the knights were female? I wondered. Half? Or a.majority? Despite the fact that Tiel was the knight at Zeis, it was Vola who taught me, as she had taught Artur and Marek Kreegan. Artur, Dr. Pohn, and Father Bronz not withstanding, it suddenly seemed to me that an extraordinary number of the staff of the Castle had been female, and the first master I'd met after arriving on Lilith had been a woman, as had at least half of Artur's soldiers.
Even in my statistically small sample, then, the women were numerically superior to the men. Perhaps Pohn had more reason to confine his experiments to young women than just perversion.
I looked around again at these—witches. Dismiss the religious cultism, the savage label, all the rest, and reduce it to what was known. Their chief was one who had the power in spades—Bronz had said she might be in Kreegan's class had she had training, but as I knew only too well, such power even untrained can be enormous if emotionally aroused, and hate was one of the best emotions for that sort of thing. Sumiko. O'Higgins hated Zeis, if only for the principle of the thing—Zeis had Pohn, and Pohn had done a number on Ti, a woman.
These others . . . Even though most
looked
like pawns, were they? There was something here I was missing, unless Satan, Prince of Darkness, really had something here. Something had kept this tempting target for Keeps all around safe and secure—so secure O'Higgins dared bring her most powerful personnel to collect us.
It was getting close to dawn, and I was becoming more and more nervous. O'Higgins and Father Bronz had been at it all night, making plans of some kind or another—an odd couple if there ever was one, I decided—and finally the priest emerged from a hut and came over to me. You look lousy, he said.
You don't look so bright and eager either, I responded glumly. But how'd you expect me to sleep through something like
this?
He sat down wearily. I need some strong tea to wake me up, he muttered, more to himself than to me. She's really got something here. I have to hand it to her. I don't know if it'll work or not, but if it does, it's almost revolutionary. No, it
is
revolutionary.
I stared at
him.
Give. What are you talking about?
You remember our talks on the balance on Lilith? Well, she seems to have something that upsets that balance, at least a little.
I frowned. What do you mean?
You see these women? All virgins, believe it or not, at least with men. All exhibited strong wild talents at puberty, although most subsided to pawn status, as •per normal, after a few months to a year.
You can't tell me O'Higgins is a virgin, I commented.
He chuckled. Hard to say. I doubt if she's ever been to bed with a man, if that's what you mean, and that's all that seems to count
in
this business. There may be something to the old legend of virgins having more power in magical things—in a purely biological sense, Lilith style, I mean. Perhaps some very tiny chemical changes were not introduced. I don't know. But Sumiko got this idea, after combing the savages of the wild, that it was so. She may be crazy but she's not stupid. She was once a pretty good biochemist Outside, so don't sell her short no matter what her crazy beliefs now. At any rate, when she got sent to Lilith she didn't stay a pawn very long. Hot-blooded. Got
so
damned mad she not only fried her supervisor but stalked angrily out of a Keep to the west of here, glowing, it's said, like a firecracker from the Warden power, injuring or killing anybody who even tried to get in her way.
None of that catalyst? I responded unbelievingly.
He shook his head. None. Now you see what I mean. She was in the wild for a while before she even found out about the stuff. She wasn't just a biochemist, Cal—she was a botanist. It took her months, but she found out what the catalyst was and worked out her own methods for distilling it. How she did it without tools, without a lab, and without even the facilities of a Keep we'll never know—sheer guts and willpower, I'd say. Cal, I don't know what she's come up with, but it isn't quite the nice, pure stuff you and I got, so it isn't as effective, but it works. She recruited all these women when they were very young, just for their wild-talent potential—and, I suspect, their sexual orientation. For short periods of tune—I don't know duration —she can dose every woman here with the stuff. Awaken all their old wild talents. Use the cult beliefs and discipline to shape and direct them. He sighed. You know, in an hour or two I think old Artur may be in for a big surprise.
I thought about what he said and it gave me some immediate hope, but the more I thought about it the more I realized its long-term implications.
Pawns were hardly celibate—Ti, for example, would never make a witch for
this
group—but if O'Higgins really
did
have this stuff it was the equivalent of a fusion bomb to Lilith.
Bronz, how many women does she have here?
He was resting, and for a moment I thought he was asleep. But one eye opened. Thirteen tunes thirteen. What did you expect?
One hundred and sixty-nine women, I thought. All handpicked by somebody who knew exactly what she was doing and what she was looking for. All with demonstrated wild talents of major proportions, and with a little chemical aid to awaken those locked-away powers; all fiercely loyal to their leader and mother figure.
She hasn't got a Satanist nut cult here, I said aloud, she's got the kernel of a revolutionary army.
So it took you that long to figure all that out? Father Bronz muttered sleepily:
The facts weren't all that reassuring. I really wasn't quite sure if I'd like a world fashioned by Sumiko O'Higgins as well as I liked the one run by Marek Rreegan. I wondered idly what the witch-queen's of-fense had been to have her sent here. Nothing pleasant, that was for sure.
As the sun rose the entire company of witches went through what appeared to be a solemn ceremony that involved, as far as I could see, cursing the sun for rising and spoiling the lovely night and asking for Satan's aid in the coming fight. In the center area, over the restoked fire, a giant gourd caldron bubbled and hissed.
After morning prayers, each and every one of the women approached the caldron and, with an incantation, drank the hot, foul-smelling liquid from a crudely fashioned dipper. I felt helpless in the coming fight and wished for some of that 'brew, but Bronz would have none of it.
Sumiko says the stuff would play hell with your nervous system, he told me. I'm not sure I believe it, but we're the guests here. You just stay back and watch what happens—and keep out of the way. They'll have spears, poison darts, blowguns, bows and arrows, and even crossbows. Your duty is to stay down and out of the way. If you get killed, then all this will have been for nothing.
I started to argue, but his logic was unassailable. I went to Ti's hut, now emptied of its other occupants, and looked down at her.
She moaned, turned over, and opened her eyes, seeing me. Hi, she muttered weakly.
Hi, yourself, I responded, not bothering to hide my big grin. You know where you are?
She groaned and tried to sit up, failed the first time, then managed it. Sort of, she told me. It was— kinda like a crazy dream. I was sound asleep, and I knew I was sound asleep, but I could hear stuff when there was stuff to hear and see stuff when my eyes were open. It was all dreamy like, though, not real. She hesitated a second, looking puzzled and serious. But it was real, wasn't it, Cal? All of it? That creepy doctor, that horrible room, you rescuing me, Father Bronz, witches—they really
are
witches, aren't they, Cal?
I nodded. Sort of. At least
they
think they are.
She stared at me with the kind of expression I had never seen anyone give me before. You could've got out real easy, but you took me, she whispered, low and almost to herself. Her voice broke slightly and she said, Oh, Cal, hold me! Hug me! Please!
I went to her and gently squeezed, but she grabbed on to me and hugged and kissed me as hard and strong as she could. Finally she gasped and I saw tears in her eyes. I love you, Cal, she almost sobbed, and hugged me again.
I looked at her strangely for a moment, not quite comprehending her actions nor my reactions. I—I love you top, my little Ti, I replied, then held her close and hugged her, a sense of wonder and amazement coming over me at the realization that, incredibly, what I'd just said was true.
The village seemed deserted. I could see only the smoking remains of the fire and an empty gourd-pot. Not a sign of life, although all around I could hear the ever-present insect chorus.
And then the sound stopped.
It was eerie, incredible. For a moment I thought I had gone deaf, so absolute was the silence in contrast with what I was used to. Not a sound, not a whisper. Even the wind had stopped.
Suddenly, from all around came the sound of incredibly loud, piercing screeches, and a sudden wind whipped the trees from all over. I remained in the hut, conscious that I could do no more, but I was damned well going to see what I could see. Ti, although still very weak, was equally determined once the situation was explained to her, and when I objected to her nearness to the doorway she objected to
my
being too exposed. I surrendered and we both watched, cautiously.
The
besils
rose effortlessly from cover a hundred meters or so from the witch village. Although I couldn't see anything in back of me, I was aware from how they were deployed that they must have the place encircled.
I marveled at how the creatures seemed to rise incredibly smoothly as if on some invisible hoist, then hover there, nearly motionless, about twenty meters up, just beyond the treetops.
One
besil
glided slowly out of the formation and approached the center of the village, almost over the caldron, then descended to a point only four or five meters above the ground. I was marveling at how effortlessly the creature moved, but then the rider drew my attention.
Artur, I heard Ti gasp. And in fact it was the Sergeant at Arms of Zeis Keep, his icy power radiating like a living thing.
Witches! he shouted gruffly. I wish to speak with your leader! We have no need to do battle here today!
Suddenly, as if popping up from nowhere, Sumiko O'Higgins stood there in full robes and regalia, facing him. I had no idea how she got there without being seen.
Speak, armsman! she called back. Speak and begone! You have no right or business here!
Artur laughed evilly, although I could tell he was slightly disconcerted by her sudden appearance and defiant tone. Right?
Might
makes right, madam, as well you know. You and your colony exist here at the sufferance of the Grand Duke because you do us occasional service, but it is for that reason alone that I might spare you. You err, too, madam, in saying I have no business here. No less than my Lord Marek Kreegan has charged me to return with Cal Tremon, the fugitive who is now in your charge. Surrender him to me and we will depart in peace. All will be as it has been.
Artur laughed again. Keep the girl if you wish, he responded airily. We will even make certain she is fully restored. It is Tremon we must have, and it is Tremon we
will
have.
I don't like your tone, armsman, O'Higgins responded. You are so used to wielding absolute power that your arrogance will be your undoing. We do
not
exist here at the sufferance of Grand Duke Kobe or anyone else. Marek Kreegan is
your
Lord, but mine is Satan Mafkrieg, Prince of Darkness, King of the Underworld, and no other.
He ignored the commentary, but I heard Ti mutter under her breath, Atta girl, witchie! Give him a taste of his own big mouth!
Artur shrugged, looking very formidable and splendid on his great black beast. I take it, then, that you will not voluntarily surrender the fugitive?
I have no love for him, the witch responded, but I have far less for you and your masters. If you attack, you will be utterly and completely destroyed. The choice is yours.
Artur just glared at her a moment. Then with an almost imperceptible nudge of the big man's foot, the
besil
floated back to its place in the waiting formation. Sumiko O'Higgins just stood there, and while I marveled at her courage I thought she had acted in a pretty stupid fashion, all things considered.
