The Nonborn King (56 page)

Ceiadeyr and all his knights laughed and hefted their great swords. "You're outnumbered more than three to one," the old creator stated. "I'll give you five seconds."

"Ready, Jerry?" said Congreve quietly.

"Up yours, then. Lowlife!" Celo howled, and launched the heaviest psychozap he could muster at the armored human. Congreve stood unmoving in the midst of a snapping coronal discharge. At the same time, a PK knight came soaring straight at him from the rear ranks of the invaders, brandishing a flaming sword like the Angel of Eden.

"Zap him, Jer," Congreve said.

One of the elites bent to his laser carbine and there was a Moogish chirp A scarlet beam flicked momentarily The psychokmetic, sailing into it head-on, was sliced cleanly from crown to crotch through glass armor, flesh, and bone, and crashed to the pavement less than two meters in front of Celadeyr

"Surrender." Congreve repeated The Tanu force stood stockstill Then, abruptly, four coercers and a creator leaped forward, swinging their blades The entire front rank of elites fired their Matsus, this time with the beams dialed to needle Drilled through heart and brain, the five attackers crumpled, their armor ringing a death knell on the stone slabs of the compound

"Surrender " Now Congreve's voice was weary "We have been ordered to spare you if it is possible King Alken-Lugonn reminds you that the true Adversary in the Nightfall War is the Firvulag Foe, not humanity "

Celadeyr seemed to hear a high-pitched mental keening It was coming from somewhere deep within the citadel, together with the sounds of a furious altercation Desperate, he sent a telepathic plea on the Battlemaster's intimate mode

Help us or we are lost

There was no reply And behind him was the sound of a glass sword dropping to the stone, and then more falling, and a sigh of many minds mourning forlorn hope Slowly, Celadeyr of Afaliah let his own arm relax, his fingers open Dulled, his once glowing sword slipped down to ignominy

The human gold nodded He said, "Carbines up Huskies ready " Open-mouthed, Celadeyr saw the elite guards lift the light-weapons in a swift gesture, hanging them on the right side of their armored backpacks Almost in the same motion, they seized the butts of different weapons that had been hung muzzle-down from the pack center and swept them into firing position

Incredulous, Celo cried, "But, we've yielded'"

Congreve was almost apologetic "Unfortunately, we're pressed for time . Ready at stun-five And,fire " And the Husqvarnas sang their sizzling song of oblivion while the Lord of Afaliah and all his knights went tumbling down

It was Kuhal Earthshaker who found Mercy

He and his knights were storming through the royal wing, tearing open doors, poking into cubbyholes and presses, stabbing behind draperies, terrorizing lackeys and chambermaids, and slaughtering the occasional gray-torc guard, when they came upon a pair of tall golden doors Mounted on them were great champleve escutcheons set in bejeweled cartouches, ridiculously ornate, but unmistakably representations of the impudent finger motif of the usurper himself

"His apartments'" Kuhal cned He smote ihe doors with his PK so that they dropped from their hinges with a resounding clang.

Rosy-gold sword high, he dashed inside, most of his forty knights at his heels There was an antechamber with cool rattan furniture and a wide balcony overlooking the moon-plated sea, and then a pair of dressing rooms with packed clothes closets, and an inner salon opening into a luxurious bath all tricked out in onyx and gold, and finally the royal bedroom itself, lit with festoons of purple and amber stars and dominated by a great gold-canopied circular bed covered in black satin sheets

On it lay a pale shape

Kuhal stood as though turned to ice Brother' his mind cried out. Nodonn, to me'

The Battlemaster matenalized at his side, filling the dark room with his sunlight radiance Kuhal drew back, motioning his fighters to retreat, and Nodonn was left alone

"My Mercy-Rosmar," Apollo whispered, standing over her

Every dear contour had been preserved the slender arms, one thrown wide, the other in repose at her side, the feet with their oddly long toes, the dimpled knees, the curved hips, and the dark cleft mystery of her sex Her small high breasts were perfect in pearl-gray ash, and her shoulders, and the neck with its torc, slightly arched so that the delicate jawline was thrown mto poignant relief Her face was calm, the lips softly parted, tinted by his own warm light so that they might have been living flesh But never had her lashes or her hair been so pallid, gossamer-fine now as the rare basaltic threads spun by certain volcanos.

"You hungered so," he said, "and made him afraid. Rightly, rightly. And now all your fierceness, alt vitality is consumed in his restoration, to my death. Ah, Mercy. You knew. You warned me. Wildfire, burning heedless and free. Wait "

He slipped off one rose-glass gauntlet. The silver hand passed swiftly over the length of her body. There was left only the torc and dust, scattered in feathery coils on black cloth ...

Outside the window the sinking moon suddenly kindled to a violent gold- A mind-voice commanded:

Come out.

They met in the high air above the sea, bright and furious and shielded only by their minds, as the ntual demanded.

When the sharp green lightning of the preliminary sparring began to flash, and thunder was flung back upon the ramparts of the city, all of the other contention ceased. Tanu partisans of both heroes left off their trivial battling, and the human wamors as well, to watch the duel of the titans. Noncombatants who had hidden from the invasion's fury now crept out onto .the battlements and turrets to stand among the quiet spectators in glass armor.

Goriah was almost ghostly now, with the metapsychic faerie lights turned off and the oil lamps guttering low in predawn dark- The green explosions out over the Strait of Redon cast shadows that were lunar in their starkness. The glowing bodies of the two antagonists were all but drowned in the dazzling glare.

Some of the people watching had been on the White Silver Plain, witnesses to the earlier encounter between Aiken and Nodonn that had been aborted by the Flood. These noted certain differences in the fighting form of the opponents: The little human had become more circumspect and defensive, and the godly Battlemaster now fought with a wanton aggressiveness at odds with his usual cool implacability

Nodonn was the more active pursuer. Englobed in an auroral nimbus, he soared about the drifting trickster, peppering him with an almost continuous fusillade of energy gouts that spewed from his Sword like stellar flares. When these rebounded from Aikens' psychocreative screen, they seemed to bruise it, causing the corona to flash blue or sickly yellow-green or, in the fire of the more intense blasts, a lingering vermilion. "Spoiler!" the storm-voice roared- "Nonborn! I am the heir of The Many-Colored Land. the first child of the Thagdal and Nontusvel. Who engendered you, Lowlife? Sterile dishes in genetic kitchen? Test tubes mixing frozen sperm and the sluggish egg of a dead woman? What a King! What a Battlemaster!

And the Sword blasted and the monstrous concussions rolled over the affronted sea, and Aiken's mind-shield flashed deeply while his small armored figure seemed to dull and darken inside its metapsychic halo.

"Fight back!" Nodonn raged. "Or do you fight only women? Did her passion frighten you, little one? Did you shrink from her warmth like a slug fleeing the sunlight? I am the sun! Eclipse me if you can!"

Inside the slowly shrinking mind-screen, the trickster hoisted his Spear, and one finger He remained silent, and he did not retaliate. The scarlet-patched sphere of force seemed to drift aimlessly, almost skimming the surface of the black water.

"Fight, damn you!" Nodonn thundered. "Or are you seeking death?" His aura streaming like a comet's tail, the Battlemaster orbited above his rival. "Is that it? By killing her, you hoped to restore your own broken mind. You fed on her creativity to bolster your own! Was it worth it. corruptor? Worth destroying the only thing you loved?"

Nodonn thumbed the uppermost of the five power-setting studs on the Sword's hilt, summoning the weapon's full potential. The readout on the power supply told him that he would have only two shots of this magnitude before draining the weapon.

"Are you tired of being King? Tired of coercing those who hate and fear and despise you? Little man! Trickster' Furtive conniver! Betrayer of honor and nobility and beauty'"

A stupendous light-burst engulfed Aiken and his screen and seemed to dig a crater in the flat sea. Then a chaos of luminous vapor whirled and fountained, and deep within it were pulses of golden radiance alternating with sullen glows of deepest carmine lake.

Nodonn waited- At length, a smooth sphere bobbed up from the ferment, its color now as darkly red as coagulating blood. It barely sufficed to enclose the dull-armored little figure clutching its glass lance.

"Come then," Apollo invited- The bubble ascended slowly. Aiken's visor was open, his face like a skull wrapped in light scarlet skin and his eyes deep as wells.

Nodonn blazed. "Will you go to death silent?" The Sword was ready. "Very well." In the ultimate stroke, Nodonn called up ali the energies of his brain and flung them simultaneously with the full power of the photonic weapon. The resulting flare was blinding green and white, clothed in a shimmering plasma haze. The doom-clap that accompanied it flogged the atmosphere and sent echoes caroming endlessly between the hills of Armorica and the Breton highlands across the wide strait.

Aiken was there. Unshielded. Golden.

"No," said the Battlemaster.

The Shining One was smiling and his mind open wide; and Nodonn in despair knew that it had all been planned and he allowed to do his utmost, so that those watching would receive the final affirmation, either through farsenses or through the evidence of their own eyes.

Aiken unfastened the baldric holding the Spear's powerpack and lifted the apparatus off. Held motionless in the strengthening dawn, Nodonn felt an insidious PK impulse working at his own harness. The straps slipped from his shoulders and the Sword's hill was torn from his nerveless grasp. At the same time the Spear went flying from Aiken and both of the weapons disappeared.

Nodonn removed his helmet and stood poised in the air. His shielding nimbus had evaporated in his final effort against the Nonbom King, but his body was sunrise bright.

Aiken was a naked star.

His mind reached out. "I need yours, too," was all he said.

Apollo flamed and all his power passed, and what was left was only gray ashes and a blackened silver hand falling toward the sea, and a last ironic thought fading.

The King of the Many-Colored Land caught the hand. The sun was coming up behind his Castle of Glass, and his people were singing a Song that might be for him.

It was good enough, he thought, and headed tor home.

THE END OF PART FOUR

EPILOGUE

ON OCALA ISLAND IT WAS STILL FAST NIGHT

The tree trogs were practicing overtures for the autumn mating season Fireflies blinked in Ihe jacaranda trees next to the porch The moon, bronze and low, seemed to be mirroring Marc Remillard's sardonic, one-sided smile

"Was that what you expected?" Patncia Castellane asked

He slowly rose from his canvas deck chair and stretched, the perfect metapsychic Wagnente "Just about The mental absorption ploy was, unusual The Poltroyan race were accustomed to batten on their foes in a similar fashion during their precoadunate days, but I've never heard of a human doing it Rather baroque Interesting, though

She stood beside him The lingering memories of the drama just played in Europe flickered in his mind The conscious levels were tranquil again, diamond-hard above the scars "I'm so glad you're better," she said "I was afraid "

His laugh was insouciant, rich with the old casual power "You should know by now that Abaddon takes a lot of killing I was taken by surprise It won't happen again "

"You're still going^"

"If i don't, he'll come to me "

"That might be preferable "

"I'm considering it " He kissed her, put an arm around her shoulder There was a chill wind off the lake

She sighed "Well, it should be a very interesting Grand Tourney "

EPILOGUE

"Perhaps we should plan to attend," said Marc Renullard Hand in hand, they went into the house

With the cooler air came dew The frogs fell silent, the fireflies hid away among the foliage, and Ocala Island slept

THE END OF

THE NONBORN KING

Volume IV of The Saga of Pliocene Exile, titled THE ADVERSARY, tells of the struggle against the fall of Night, of a couple of redemptions and an ambiguity, and of an ultimate recurvature back to the Galactic Milieu where it all began