Hiero Desteen (Omnibus) (50 page)

She whistled sharply and waved an arm over her head. Hiero smiled as a towering shape paced up to the girl, massive hooves clicking on bits of gravel as it came. A giant head with blubber lips and a drooping snout lowered itself so that the huge, soft nose touched her hair briefly. Then the morse stood quietly waiting to see why he had been summoned.

When humanity began to pick itself up after The Death, the horses were gone, vanished without a trace. In the far North, the reviving structure of the Abbeys and their dependent farms tried many other animals and found these mutated descendants of the moose to be best. Hiero and Klootz had chosen each other at the annual calf-pick years before, and they had never been separated.

I wonder how he'll like the South,
Hiero thought to his mate and the older man.
Nothing like him there. Will the people be afraid of him.?

"Not afraid," Luchare answered, stroking a leg of the morse. "He would be admired as a creature no one had ever seen before. He would add to your prestige."

Hiero stood up and began to stroke the enormous, palmate antlers with careful fingers, peeling off the velvet where it came away easily. He could feel the heat underneath where this outer cover of the new antlers was not ready. Klootz lipped his shoulder affectionately.

Aldo resumed his argument. "Consider what you have already done in a land foreign to you and with only the help of friends you found along the way. You've saved a princess, crossed the great Inland Sea, and fought and beaten some of our worst enemies. And you've accomplished a nearly impossible mission."

"You've done what no one else could have done," Luchare added when Aldo stopped. "You have defeated the one who calls himself S'duna, the chief of their horrid Blue Circle. Now you can go on to be a leader of my people."

Hiero looked down at her, and his heart filled with this love that was greater than he had ever known before. Then he thought of Abbot Demero, the grim old warrior who had sent him on this mission. Would the ruler of the Abbey Council approve of his going south with a new wife and a new task? He seemed to see the lined old face in his mind, and it was smiling at him. A sign? Hiero shrugged at the idea and then thought again. Perhaps he was picking up a vague and transient thought from far away. He smiled and looked at Brother Aldo, another wise old man who had gone to war because he had no choice in his own soul.

"Tell Gimp that you'll leave for the North at dawn. Luchare and I will go south on Klootz. I assume that you can communicate with your Eleveners in the South? Then send me word and we'll open a channel of messages." He laughed a little sourly. "You say you know Abbot Demero. Then you can keep him off my back and not let me be cursed and expelled from the church. Now let's get a little sleep."

The Kingdom of the East

Golden sunlight streamed through the narrow windows of the palace, and a great gong boomed, announcing that day had come again to mighty D'alwah. The sound was echoed and re-echoed from far and near as the watch on the walls and the patrols along the bridges and covered ways answered with their smaller strikers of ringing metal The whole walled city pealed and rang, a vibrant diapason of challenging sound. Hiero sat up in bed with a jerk, covering his ears against the clamor and muttering darkly.

"You do that every morning," Luchare's voice said. "After all the time we've been here, I should think you'd be used to the gong."

He pried his eyes open to see her dressed and seated at her mirror, coloring her lips and her eyelashes with the bluish paste which was currently the height of fashion at court. He pursed his lips and made a light spitting noise.

She looked around and grinned merrily. "Don't be so stiff. I have to look my best when I'm officially entertaining the noble ladies at breakfast. And what kept you up till all hours last night? Talking religion with our high priest again?"

"Umm." He'd found the breakfast she had ordered for him on a tray beside the bed and he began eating. "Old Markama isn't bad for a high priest—for a D'alwah high priest, that is. But, my God, what has happened to the church down here?
Celibate
priests! And all these so-called monasteries where the nobles send their unwanted young of both sexes to paint wooden pictures or sew and pray all day—and to live in silence and
chastity!
It's as if the Unclean were already in control and determined to make people go crazy." His face became suddenly serious. "And I can't be sure that this isn't a hotbed of the Unclean with their minions all wearing mechanical mind shields."

"Hiero!" Her face grew troubled as she stared at him. "I know you really believe that. You may even be right. But you haven't found any proof—just a few people whose minds you can't read. And you told me when you were training me that a lot of people have natural screens, people who are unaware of it themselves."

He sighed and dropped the subject, while she turned the conversation to the Court Ball that was being given in the palace that evening. But after she left for her official duties, he dressed and moved slowly out of the palace and into the maze of the city, still brooding as he exercised his legs.

There was something ugly and dangerous going on in the royal castle. He could feel it, though no clear thoughts came through to him. But there was a deep undercurrent of hatred, impossible to disguise from someone who had been through all he had with the Unclean and their allies.

Yet he had been treated very well. When he and Luchare appeared on Klootz, the guard at the main gate had saluted, let them through, and given her full royal honors. An hour later, he had been closeted with Luchare and her father, Danyale IX, hereditary ruler of the sovereign state of D'alwah.

To Hiero's surprise, he liked the king, and Danyale made it plain that he liked his new son-in-law.

The king was a large, heavy man, still muscular, but inclining a little to fat, now that he had passed the half-century mark. His curly, graying hair was worn short, and his face was handsome and open over his mustache and beard. His kilts and robes were of a magnificent weave and color, and he wore many rings and pendants. But he was never without a long, two-edged sword whose handle was plain and worn. His handgrip was firm and hard.

Was this the brutal tyrant whose only daughter had fled into the wilderness to avoid a marriage foisted upon her by her dynastic-minded father, as Luchare had claimed?

Danyale brought the matter up while he and Hiero sat on the edge of a parapet of the palace. The ever-present guards had been waved out of earshot and lounged some distance away, conversing in low tones and watching both their ruler and their new prince.

"Look, Hiero, I know what Luchare must have told you about that business of marrying her off to Efrem. But all my nobles insisted—the whole council, including the church fathers. What was I to do? God knows, we must have allies. Chespek was all there was. Efrem is afraid of me, and I thought I could control him, see that he didn't harm the girl. I know the bastard's reputation as well as she does. But, damn it, this kind of thing is part of being a king. And with my only son dead . . ." He looked into Hiero's eyes and said nothing further for a moment.

"I understand," the Metz priest said quietly. "The realm has to come first, all the time." He rather admired the older man. It couldn't be easy for the king to apologize for something he saw as a vital, standard matter of politics.

There was no trouble in communication. Hiero was a master linguist, and Luchare had coached him in the speech of D'alwah for weeks as they journeyed toward her home.

"What will Efrem do now?" Hiero's question was only partly idle. The priests, awed by his powers and knowledge of the past, had told him much, and he had learned more by mind search. But, as a matter of honor, he could not probe Luchare's father. And he needed to know what the man thought, how his mind worked, and what his capabilities were. If D'alwah were to be protected from the Unclean and their grim allies—if it were to be enlisted on the side of the Abbeys—then much still had to be learned.

Danyale's answer was a snort of contempt. "Hell fume in private, then do whatever the priests tell him when he goes to confession for half-murdering some slave girl. Forget him." He eyed Hiero, his wariness apparent all at once. "You seem to have pull with the Church Universal, my boy. Do the nobles up your way control the priests? Down here it has been a long, constant struggle to keep the power in my hands and out of theirs—or worse, from some puppet whom they might raise up against me. You seem to know all their priestly secrets and a lot of your own as well. You could be of much help to me," he added. The attempt was regrettable, Hiero thought; Danyale was no intriguer, but a decent, if not-too-bright, soldier, trapped in a decadent court and surrounded by schemers, both civil and ecclesiastic.

"We do things differently," he evaded. "Our nobles and gentry are so busy fighting the Unclean that we learned long ago to be one pillar of the state and support the church as the other. And," he added, as if in afterthought, "of course we have no actual king, but only a noble, supreme Council with both church and civil members," It was only half a lie, since the Abbey Council was actually that. The fact that there were no nobles could wait until Hiero and the Metz Republic were ready.

"Well," Danyale said heavily, "I suppose you have secrets, too. I find the world harder and harder to understand." He looked up, a smile tugging at the corner of his full lips. "One thing, though. I'm damn glad to have you as a son-in-law, prince or no prince. Oddly enough, I love my daughter and I'm glad to see her happy. But more than that—" He leaned over and tapped Hiero's knee. "I think you're going to be valuable to me, my boy—to me and to D'alwah."

He rose, clapped the Metz on the shoulder, and strode off to his day's duties. He was not an unkingly figure, Hiero reflected, and perhaps somewhat more clever than he appeared.

There were other meetings of a similar nature and meetings with the great men of the kingdom also. Markama, the archpriest, was a decent enough old man and could have exerted great power, had he possessed the basic ability to lead. But he was obsessed with ritual and hieratic obscurantism. But at least he was no enemy, being in awe of Hiero's knowledge, both of church secrets and of the Unclean, whom he truly feared and detested.

Most of the work of the church—the accounts, administration, schools, and such—seemed to be in the hands of one Joseato, a priest just below the archpriest in rank, a thin, colorless bureaucrat who always carried bundles of parchment and had a perpetually distracted air. Hiero found nothing special to dislike about the man. But Joseato had a shielded mind, which was a big factor to consider. Could he have a bluish metal locket under his robes, a mechanical mind screen of the Unclean? Of course, as Luchare had pointed out, the shield could be innate, as many were, or the result of the sketchy mental training which even the southern church had not completely lost. There was no way of telling what power, mental or physical, impelled a good mind shield, and he could hardly ask the priest to strip. Joseato simply had to be watched, as far as that was possible.

He was still pondering as he ceased wandering and turned back toward the palace stables. There were too many shielded minds that needed watching. There was Count Ghiftah Hamili, for instance, a fine soldier as well as a great noble and landowner. The youngish, quiet man had been a suitor at one time for Luchare's hand and was much at court. Although friendly enough, he had a disconcerting gaze which the Metz priest found fixed on himself far too often for his liking.

But at least Hiero had found one sure friend. A senior lay brother of the Eleveners had approached him, alerted through the agency of Aldo and the underground network of the Brotherhood. The fact that Mitrash was a lieutenant of the palace guard made things even better. Day or night, he could come and go without suspicion within the well-protected precincts of the inner fortress. The balding, middle-aged veteran exuded competence. Already, he and Hiero had held several conferences late at night.

The trouble was that Mitrash did not know very much. While eager to be helpful, he was simply a good, honest soldier who had been recruited as an acolyte by the Order and placed in the palace as an observer. He was deeply worried about the inner rot and subversion he saw about him throughout the kingdom, but he was not a mental master like Aldo. He had many contacts and could reach other members of the Order, but this took time. And he was mind-shielded—a good thing in his case. Hiero had requested that Mitrash be assigned as captain of his bodyguard, but the military red tape of D'alwah was no different from that of any other army. Meanwhile, the man was near at hand to guard Luchare if her spouse were called away.

Then the stables were ahead, and it was time to exercise Klootz and Hiero's new mount, a hopper named Segi.

The giant morse was pleased to see Hiero and butted him playfully while being led from his stall by awed grooms. No one in D'alwah had ever seen or heard of a morse, and the great, antlered creature filled everyone with astonished respect, much of which accrued to his rider. Well aware of this, Hiero took every opportunity to display himself on the huge, swart back before the crowd that usually gathered at the exercise grounds to see them.

Behind the morse came Segi, ridden by a groom. At the appearance of the jumper, the mighty barrel of Klootz swelled in rage; had the morse been able to catch Segi alone, he would have made pulp of his rival, since the idea of Hiero on another animal's back was intolerable, Segi seemed well aware of this feeling and gave Klootz a wide berth.

Segi was a hopper, the chosen mount of the cavalry of D'alwah, another mutated replacement mankind had found for the long-extinct horse. Friendly and mild-mannered, Segi towered over his rider by a good six feet. He stood balanced on two giant hind legs and a long, columnar tail. His small forefeet, each no longer than a tall man's arm, were tucked up high on his broad chest. Clothed in smooth, tan fur, with a white blaze on his forehead and great, erect ears cocked first one way and then another, he looked what he was, the prize of the king's stud and a much-valued wedding present to Danyale's new son-in-law.