The Avengers of Carrig (5 page)

Throughout the long debate Belfeor had said nothing; he had stood in the same defiant pose with his thumbs hooked in his belt. Now he raised his voice.

“Am I accepted, then?”

“Against my will, against the will of us all, but because it is not forbidden, you are accepted,” said Sir Bavis bitterly.

“Good!” Belfeor said, and grinned around at the scowling nobles. “Moreover, friends, I’m not here, as that young fellow suggested, to have my neck broken by your long. Perhaps in a day or two we’ll see those sneers on the other side of your heads!”

Seeing the man’s utter self-confidence, Saikmar felt a chill of apprehension. It was ridiculous to think this upstart might succeed! And yet … such assurance must be rooted somewhere.

“The man’s clearly mad,” he heard his uncle whisper. Possibly, Saikmar thought. But he was terribly afraid that in fact he knew something which the folk of Carrig did not and that his secret might gain him the victory.

Not merely an upstart, but an unbeliever too—surely the gods would never permit a man like that to triumph over the king! In a dark side-chapel of the great temple, hours later, Saikmar’s head still rang with what Belfeor had said. It was the custom that each contender should watch the night through in the chapel where stood his own clan’s symbol and the statues of the appropriate patron gods; belonging to no clan, the intruder naturally put the priests in a quandary over where he might properly keep his watch.

And Belfeor had said in loud cheerful tones such as men never used in the holy precincts, “Don’t mind me. Anywhere comfortable will do, so’s I can doze off when I feel inclined.”

Leaning back in his hard chair carved from a single block of stone, Saikmar stared wondering at the god-statues and the twywit symbol. If Belfeor was killed in the hunt, of course, that would be fit reward for his impiety. But if he lived, and worse yet if the king did not …

Doggedly he drove the idea from his mind. He could not, however, escape the knowledge that the intrusion of Belfeor had placed an intolerable responsibility on him. He had read that fact in everyone’s eyes as he was being dedicated prior to his watch: in his mother’s, his uncle’s, the priests’, the acolytes’ …
He
was the person on whom Carrig depended for the frustration of the intruder.

To distract himself, and also in the hope that it would encourage him to emulate it, he began to meditate on the nature of his clan animal, the twywit. It was almost as good a beast to claim totem-kinship with as the parradile, for it was agile, cunning, and extremely tough. It was about the weight of a man, having two muscular hind legs with which it could leap when pouncing on prey, or bound across an obstacle such as a creek, when it would retract and hold up its clawed forelimbs. Its normal gait, however, was on all fours, a quick scurrying run. Its head was flat above
and developed below into short, powerful, heavily fanged jaws. Its fur was thick and smooth, shading from light tan on the head to reddish-brown on the belly and blackish-brown on the back. It was tailless.

In another way, though, it was a poor clan-sign to boast about, for a few years ago a great pestilence had almost cleared the territory of twywits—to the relief of farmers who had lost valuable stock or even children through its ravages, and to the dismay of the clansmen who bore its symbol.

Was it a good thing at all to claim kinship with a beast of prey? Saikmar had never posed the question to himself before, but now, as he remembered the children that had been killed by twywits, it arose unbidden in his mind. And this was the worst of all times to doubt the wisdom of the gods, when tomorrow not only his life but the future of Carrig depended on their whims!

He stared at the statue of Maige, goddess of speed and the wind, trying to concentrate on her attributes, but his mind kept on wandering against his will. There had been a Clan Graat once—mentioned in
The Ballad of Red Sloin
—and this for the first time struck him as strange. Because the graat was a riding- and pack-animal, domesticated and useful, whereas the twywit, the parradile, the coshivor, the arbitz, and the rest of the clan totems were wild beasts and mostly very savage.

Could the graat possibly have been a wild beast too, in the days when the clans first chose their totems? It was a new and disturbing idea, but it made sense.

Saikmar shivered—not with cold, though in the high-roofed draughty temple at this dead hour of night it was far from warm, but with the impact of his unexpected insight. One did not usually think of revolutionary changes in the world. Certainly there were changes going on all the time, but they were petty: an improvement in the wing-design for gliders, novel imports from the south, shifting fashions in clothing and manners. But nothing to signify.

When you considered that a graat might once have been a wild beast, though … And that there must have been a time when on the site of Carrig there was nothing at all, not even a cluster of clay huts …

Suppose Belfeor did kill the king: having no clan, what would he do? Would he choose to be adopted into one of the existing clans, or would he create a new one for himself? If so, what would he choose as his clan animal?

Angrily, Saikmar checked the line of thought again. It was ridiculous to envisage Belfeor’s success. Better to pursue the scarcely less comfortable notion that things had changed radically in the past than the terrifying likelihood of their changing in the future. He had always been studiously inclined, and he knew most of the old tales that accounted for man’s presence in the world. They varied in detail, but on basics they agreed. Once, they recounted, man had been like the gods, and dwelt in a fairer world than this, and enjoyed marvelous powers over nature. But they became arrogant. Seeing this, the gods smote the sun so that it blazed a hundred times more fiercely than usual, as a fire roars up when a poker lets air into its base. Most of the arrogant people were destroyed; only a few, by divine grace, were able to excape the sun’s fury. These had fled in a boat across some vast ocean—the sages held that the Western Ocean was referred to—and for a long while had been compelled to live in a frigid barren waste. When at last they were permitted to move to more hospitable lands, they were warned that it was only on sufferance. If they offended the gods again, they would be destroyed forever.

It was said further that the custom of the king-hunt had been instituted by the gods as an annual reminder that man was a frail creature—that such a beast as the parradile, not being more than a beast was strong enough to kill men and cunning enough to escape their lures and traps. On the other hand, you could point to lands where no such custom existed and argue instead that the king-hunt was invented by men themselves to ensure that only the cleverest and most resourceful achieved power in Carrig, and to bestow on the reigning clan those qualities of strength and subtlety men respected in parradiles. But here the matter shaded over into magic, and magic was the exclusive province of Clan Parradile; Saikmar knew little of it.

Whichever way you looked at it, however, one constant fact remained: this was the custom of Carrig, and for it men died yearly. It was not fitting that an irreverent
stranger should trample his clumsy feet across sacred ground as Belfeor was doing. Saikmar turned to the other statue flanking the twywit symbol—that of Oric, god of everything sharp, fangs, claws, darts, and spears—and besought him to blunt Belfeor’s weapons so that they would not wound.

With dawn came the clangor of gongs in the streets, announcing the departure of the advance party who had in some ways a more dangerous task even than the contenders, for they had to scramble among the cavern-riddled foothills of the volcanic range and rout the king from his slumber. More parradiles than the king wintered in those warm caves, and there was always the risk of disturbing a mother with young, who would attack on sight because she had not hibernated. The king, however, would be drowsy and placid, and the business of coming awake, gulping down the provisions he had stored last fall and emerging into the daylight would occupy him long enough for the advance guard to make their getaway.

When the gongs had died in the distance, the priests came to fetch the contenders and make sacrifice in their name on the hearthstone of the temple. After that, it was for them to decide what to do until the king was wakened. Those who were not too excited could sleep away the morning and refresh themselves after their wakeful night Much to his own surprise this was what Saikmar did, lying on a bundle of cloaks while his riggers double-checked his glider, renewing the thongs of tough elastic kowtschook which propelled its darts, testing every inch of the control cords to make sure they would not snap.

He did not see what became of Belfeor. When he inquired on waking, he found that no one very much cared.

Each of the clans had its own launching-site for gliders. Clan Twywit’s was closest of all to the city, and the party accompanying Saikmar could delay their departure a full hour beyond the others’ without risking the loss of their chance at the king. It was almost noon when they took station on the grassy plateau among the volcanic peaks, and looked over the landscape for signs of activity. Saikmar knew this area better than his own clan’s estate, for he had flown over it hundreds of times and each smoking crater
was an old friend of his, ready to lend the help of an updraught or veil him temporarily with blinding smoke. Yet he found himself trembling as he waited for the riggers to set up his glider on its launching-ramp.

“Scared?” Luchan said. As a former contender he had the right to be present at the launching-site, though Saikmar would have been happier without him; Luchan’s missing arm and closed eye were unpleasant reminders of what the king could do to an over-bold attacker.

“A little,” Saikmar acknowledged.

“You’ve taken nothing of Sir Bavis’, I hope?” Luchan murmured. “No luck-cup or anything like it?”

Saikmar shook his head. “None has been sent to me,” he declared. He and Luchan had talked about this before—the slanderous charge that Sir Bavis drugged the contenders.

Luchan shrugged and gave a twisted smile. “Myself, I did. I think I was unwise. However, since you’ve been sent none and I lack all proof for my charge except that after the drink I felt less than completely myself, let’s refrain from blighting the day with talk of such matters. What were you thinking of when I spoke?”

“Of the stranger Belfeor,” Saikmar answered. “He gives me a disturbing sense of—of menace.”

Luchan clapped him on the shoulder with his surviving hand. “What you have to worry about today is the king, my friend, not some foolish and arrogant stranger! I’ve been making inquiries, and no one seems to know what’s become of him since he left the temple. No one has seen him with a glider on the way here, no one has any knowledge of where he might plan to set up a launching-ramp, or of any servants or riggers he can command … It’s my guess he’s changed his mind, and he’ll never dare show his face in Carrig again.”

Saikmar was on the point of saying that he disagreed, that he did not feel Belfeor was that kind of man, when a shrill cry came from the keen-eyed lookout on the edge of the plateau.

They wave the yellow flag! The king’s been found!”

At once there was a frenzy of activity. Up hobbled his uncle to embrace Saikmar and wish him well; the riggers stood to their weights and winches as he piled into the
fragile shell of the glider and fastened safety-lines about him, setting his knife where he could reach it to cut himself loose if he had to. He took hold of the control-stick and set it for launching, pushing it well forward so that he could dive from the plateau’s edge before rising into the hot up-current of the nearest crater; then there was a wait which seemed long as eternity.

“He comes!” the lookout called at last, and they let go the weights.

Next moment the eyes of everyone else were on the king, but Saikmar dared not turn his gaze in that direction yet He was too busy gentling the glider through the treacherous volcanic draughts, seeking the up-current which would whip him a safe thousand feet higher than the king. When he at last located it, he could look. And caught his breath. No matter how often a man has flown over the Smoking Hills, he thought, there could never be another occasion like the first time you shared the air with the king-parradile.

He had just taken his lazy leap into the sky; it was clear from which cave he had emerged, for his stiff tail pointed at it like a signpost. He was black, and blue, and gold, and he shone in the sunlight. Under his smooth hide the pumping wing-muscles rippled like waves in deep oil. Never in living memory had the king survived so long; never in memory or legend had one grown to such a—size!

Seeing his true proportions, Saikmar was so startled he almost tilted his glider into a stall. Before today, he had never flown with the king—only watched and studied his habits from the ground. The parradile’s body was five times a man’s height from shoulders to root of tail, sharp-keeled below, broad and flat above. Tail and neck together added as much again to his length; atop the curving neck the wise old head, hammer-shaped, turned to survey the rising adversaries, for other gliders had taken the air now. And as though defiantly the king opened his vast jaws in a blood-red yawn, then leaned on his left pillion—sixty feet to the tip now it was full-spread!—and swooped into the updraught of a volcano.

Before Saikmar knew what had happened, the king was at his own level and still rising.

Some said that the parradile had copied this technique
from men; Saikmar held this to be nonsense, arguing that no flying creature could lair among the Smoking Hills and not discover the trick in the course of nature. Yet, watching the elegance with which the king rode the hot rising air, he understood how people could mistake it for a skill learned like human skills.

As yet, however, it seemed the king was drowsy, for he did no more than glance toward Saikmar’s glider and then sheer off in a dive, pumping his wings to work the winter’s stiffness out of them. Relieved, for he felt it best to circle awhile before planning his first attack, Saikmar decided to gain more height still, and while doing so to see where the other contenders were.

He recognized their various gliders easily enough; each clan had its distinctive livery colors, and painted their craft accordingly. His own was decked in the colors of the twywit, black-brown above and red-brown underneath. Others were green, slate-colored, blood-red, checkered or striped.

No glider should have been white.

He realized this the instant he saw it take the sky, even as his intelligence rebelled against the information of his eyes. No glider could climb like that—a mile from any updraught, at the lowest estimate! Yet here it came, leaping up the sky with an earsplitting howl, and …

His perception of time seemed to fail him. Minutes later he returned to awareness, to find himself guiding his glider through a series of dull mechanical spirals toward a landing-place, its darts unfired. There was no longer any target to loose them against.