Hawkmoon: The Jewel in the Skull (45 page)

Flana of Kanbery did not watch the tumblers and failed to see any humour in the actions of the clowns.

Instead she turned her beautiful heron mask in the direction of the strangers and regarded them with what was for her unusual curiosity, thinking dimly that she would like to know them better, for they offered the possibility of a unique diversion, particularly if, as she suspected, they were not entirely manlike.

Meliadus, who could not rid himself of the suspicion that he was being prejudiced against by his king and plotted against by his fellow nobles, made a mighty attempt to be civil to the visitors. When he wished, he could impress strangers (as he had once impressed Count Brass) with his dignity, his wit and his manli-ness, but this night it was an effort and he feared that the effort could be detected in his tone.

"Do you find the entertainment to your liking, my lords of Asiacommunista?" he would say—and be met with a slight inclination of the huge heads. "Are the clowns not amusing?"—and there would be a movement of the hand from Kaow Shalang Gatt, who bore the golden staff—or: "Such skill! We brought those con-jurers from our territories in Italia—and those tumblers were once the property of a Duke of Krahkov—you must have entertainers of equal skill at your own Emperor's court . . ." and the other, called Orkai Heong Phoon, would move his body in its seat, as if in discomfort. The result was to increase Baron Meliadus's sense of impatience, make him feel that these peculiar creatures somehow judged themselves above him or were bored by his attempts at civility, and it became more and more difficult for him to continue the light conversation that was the only conversation possible while the music played.

At length he rose and clapped his hands. "Enough of this. Dismiss these entertainers. Let us have more exotic sport." And he relaxed a trifle as the sexual gym-nasts entered the hall and began to perform for the delight of the depraved appetites of the Dark Empire.

He chuckled, recognizing some of the performers, pointing them out to his guests. "There's one who was a Prince of Magyaria—and those two, the twins, were the sisters of a king in Turkia. I captured the blonde one there myself—and the stallion you see—in a Bulgarian stable. Many of them I personally trained." But though the entertainment relaxed the tortured nerves of Baron Meliadus of Kroiden, the emissaries of the President Emperor Jong Mang Shen seemed as unmoved and as taciturn as ever.

At last the performance was over and the entertainers retired (to the emissaries' relief, it seemed). Baron Meliadus, much refreshed, wondering if the creatures were of flesh and blood at all, gave the order for the ball to commence.

"Now gentlemen," said he rising, "shall we circulate about the floor so that you may meet those who have assembled to honour you and be honoured by you."

Moving stiffly, the emissaries of Asiacommunista followed Baron Meliadus, towering over the heads of even the tallest in the hall.

"Would you dance?" asked the baron.

"We do not dance, I regret," said Kaow Shalang Gatt tonelessly, and since etiquette demanded that the guests dance before the others could, no dancing was done.

Meliadus fumed. What did King Huon expect of him?

How could he deal with these automata?

"Do you not have dances in Asiacommunista?" he said, his voice trembling with suppressed anger.

"Not of the sort I suppose you to prefer," replied Orkai Heong Phoon, and though there was no inflection in his voice, again Baron Meliadus was given to think that such activities were beneath the dignity of the Asiacommunistan nobles. It was becoming, he thought grimly, exceedingly difficult to remain polite toward these proud strangers. Meliadus was not used to suppressing his feelings where mere foreigners were concerned and he promised himself the pleasure of dealing with these two in particular should he be given the privilege of leading any army that conquered the "Far East.

Baron Meliadus paused before Adaz Promp who bowed to the two guests. "May I present one of our mightiest warlords, the Count Adaz Promp, Grand Constable of the Order of the Hound, Prince of Parye and Protector of Munchein, Commander of Ten Thousand." The ornate dog-mask inclined itself again.

"Count Adaz led the force that helped us conquer all the European mainland in two years when we had allowed for twenty," Meliadus said. "His hounds are invincible."

"The baron flatters me," said Adaz Promp, "I am sure you have mightier legions in Asiacommunista, my lords."

"Perhaps, I do not know. Your army sounds as fierce as our dragon-hounds," Kaow Shalang Gatt said.

"Dragon-hounds? And what are they?" Meliadus enquired, remembering at last what his king had desired him to do.

"You have none in Granbretan?"

"Perhaps we call them by another name? Could you describe them?"

Kaow Shalang Gatt made a movement with his staff.

"They are about twice the height of a man—one of our men—with seventy teeth that are like ivory razors.

They are very hairy and have claws like a cat's. We use them to hunt those reptiles we have not yet trained for war."

"I see," Meliadus murmured, thinking that such war-beasts would require special tactics to defeat. "And how many such dragon-hounds have you trained for battle?"

"A good number," said his guest.

They moved on, meeting other nobles and their ladies, and each was prepared with a question such as Adaz Promp had asked, to give Meliadus the opportunity of extracting information from the emissaries.

But it became plain that although they were willing to indicate that their forces and weaponry were mighty, they were too cautious to provide details as to numbers and capacity. Meliadus realised that it would take more than one evening to gather that sort of information, and he had the feeling that it would be hard to get it at all.

"Your science must be very sophisticated," he said as they moved through the throng. "More advanced than ours, perhaps?"

"Perhaps," said Orkai Heong Phoon, "but I know so little of your science. It would be interesting to compare such things."

"Indeed it would," agreed Meliadus. "I heard, for instance, that your flying machine brought you several thousand miles in a very short space of time."

"It was not a flying machine," said Orkai Heong Phoon.

"No? Then how...?"

"We call it an Earth Chariot—it moves through the ground..."

"And how is it propelled? What moves the earth away from it?"

"We are not scientists," put in Kaow Shalang Gatt.

"We do not pretend to understand the workings of our machines. We leave such things to the lowlier castes."

Baron Meliadus, feeling slighted again, came to a halt before the beautiful heron mask of the Countess Flana Mikosevaar. He announced her and she curtsied.

"You are very tall," she said in her throaty murmur.

"Yes, very tall."

Baron Meliadus attempted to move on, embarrassed by the countess as he had half-suspected he would be.

He had only introduced her to fill the silence following the visitor's last remark. But Flana reached and touched Orkai Heong Phoon's shoulder. "And your shoulders are very broad," she said. The emissary made no reply, but stood stock still. Had she insulted him?

Meliadus wondered. He would have felt some satisfaction if she had. He did not expect the Asiacommunistan to complain, for he realised it was as much in the man's interests to remain on good terms with Granbretan's nobles as it was in Granbretan's interests, at this stage, to remain on good terms with them. "May I entertain you in some way?" asked Flana, gesturing vaguely.

"Thank you, but I can think of nothing at this moment," said the man, and they moved on.

Astonished, Flana watched them continue their progress. She had never been rejected thus before and she was intrigued. She decided to explore these possibilities further, when she could find a suitable time.

They were odd, these taciturn creatures, with their stiff movements. They were like men of metal, she thought.

Could anything, she wondered, produce a human emotion in them?

Their great masks of painted leather swayed above the heads of the crowd as Meliadus introduced them to Jerek Nankenseen and his lady, the Duchess Falmoliva Nankenseen who, in her youth, had ridden to battle with her husband.

And when the tour was completed, Baron Meliadus returned to his golden throne wondering, with increased frustration, where his rival, Shenegar Trott, had disappeared to, and why King Huon should have deigned not to trust him with the information of Trott's movements. He wanted urgently to rid himself of his charges and hurry to Taragorm's laboratories to discover what progress the Master of the Palace of Time had made and whether there was any possibility of discovering the whereabouts in time or space of the hated Castle Brass.

EARLY NEXT MORNING, after an unsatisfactory night in which he had given up sleep and failed to find pleasure, Baron Meliadus left to visit Taragorm at the Palace of Time.

In Londra there were few open streets. Houses, palaces, warehouses and barracks were all connected by enclosed passages which, in the richer sections of the city, were of bright colours as if the walls were made of enamelled glass or, in the poorer sections, of oily, dark stone.

Meliadus was borne through these passages in a curtained litter by a dozen girl slaves, all naked and with rouged bodies (the only kind of slaves Meliadus would have to serve him). His intention was to visit Taragorm before those boorish nobles of Asiacommunista were awake. It could be, of course, that they did represent a nation helping Hawkmoon and the rest, but he had no proof. If his hopes of Taragorm's discoveries were realised, he might gain that proof, present it to King Huon, vindicate himself and perhaps, too, rid himself of the troublesome task of playing host to the emissaries.

The passages widened and strange sounds began to be heard—dull booms and regular, mechanical noises.

Meliadus knew that he heard Taragorm's clocks.

As he neared the entrance to the Palace of Time, the noise became deafening as a thousand gigantic pendulums swung at a thousand different rates, as machinery whirred and shifted, as jacks struck bells and gongs and cymbals, mechanical birds cried and mechanical voices spoke. It was an incredibly confusing din for, although the palace contained some several thousand clocks of differing sizes, it was itself a gigantic clock, the chief regulator for the rest, and above all the other sounds came the slow, ponderous, echoing clack of the massive escapement lever, far above near the roof, and the hissing of the monstrous pendulum as it swung through the air in the Hall of the Pendulum where Taragorm conducted most of his experiments.

Meliadus's litter arrived at last before a relatively small set of bronze doors and mechanical men sprang forward to block the way, a mechanical voice cutting through the din of the clocks to demand:

"Who visits Lord Taragorm at the Palace of Tune?"

"Baron Meliadus, his brother-in-law, with the permission of the King Emperor," replied the baron, forced to shout.

The doors remained closed for a good deal longer, Meliadus thought, than they should have done, then opened slowly to admit the litter.

Now they passed into a hall with curved walls of metal, like the base of a clock, and the noise increased.

The hall was full of ticks and clacks and whirrs and booms and thumps and swishes and clangs and, had not the baron's head been encased in its wolf-helm, he would have pressed his hands to his ears. As it was he began to be convinced that shortly he would become deaf.

They passed through this hall into another swathed in tapestries (inevitably representing in highly formal-ised design a hundred different time-keeping devices) which muffled the worst of the noise. Here the girl slaves lowered the litter and Baron Meliadus pushed back the curtains with gauntleted hands and stood there to await the coming of his brother-in-law.

Again (he felt) he had to wait an unconscionable time before the man appeared, stepping sedately through the doors at the far end of the hall, his huge clock mask nodding.

"It is early, brother," said Taragorm. "I regret I kept you waiting, but I had not breakfasted."

Meliadus reflected that Taragorm had never had a decent regard for the niceties of etiquette, then he snapped: "My apologies, brother, but I was anxious to see your work."

"I am flattered. This way, brother."

Taragorm turned and left through the door he had entered, Meliadus close on his heels.

Through more tapestried passages they moved until at last Taragorm pressed his weight against the bar locking a huge door. The door opened and the air was suddenly full of the sound of a great wind; the noise of a gigantic drum sounding a painfully slow beat.

Automatically Meliadus looked up and saw the pendulum hurtling through the air above him—its bob fifty tons of brass fashioned in the form of an ornate, blazing sun, creating a draft that fluttered all the tapestries in the halls behind them and raised Meliadus's cloak like a pair of heavy silken wings. The pendulum supplied the wind and the hidden escapement lever, high above, supplied the sound like a drum. Across the vast Hall of the Pendulum was stretched an array of machines in various stages of construction, of benches containing laboratory equipment, of instruments of brass and bronze and silver, of clouds of fine golden wires, of webs of jewelled thread, of time-keeping instruments—water-clocks, pendulum movements, lever movements, ball movements, watches, chronometers, orreries, astrolabes, leaf-clocks, skeleton clocks, table clocks, sun dials—and working on all these were Taragorm's slaves, scientists and engineers captured from a score of nations, many of them the finest of their lands.

Even as Meliadus watched, there would come a flash of purple light from one part of the hall, a shower of green sparks from another, a gout of scarlet smoke from elsewhere. He saw a black machine crumble to dust and its attendant cough, tumble forward into the dust and vanish.

"And what was that?" came a laconic voice from nearby. Meliadus turned to see that Kalan of Vitall, Chief Scientist to the King-Emperor, was also visiting Taragorm.