The Warlock of Rhada (18 page)

They had seen his first Stellar Empire come into being: massive, materialistic, robust, brutal. They had seen it fall, riven by racism, political dissent, burdened with a plethora of
things.

Many Vulk now living had seen this fall of night with their own inner eyes. There was a Vulk on Rhada, Gret by name, who had walked the soil of Earth in Shakespeare’s time. Another, in Algol now, had felt the heat of Man’s first nuclear blast, hidden in the desert rocks at Alamogordo. Vulk Asa, himself, had been born on a world of the star Sirius during the time men called the Golden Age. He had lived nearly seven thousand standard years and was young, as the Vulk reckoned age.

The millennia, the wanderings, the pogroms had winnowed out the weak and foolish among the aliens. The Vulkish people had grown very wise. And not the least of their wisdom was their understanding of the younger, more savage race with whom they shared this galaxy. Their rule was this: watch, learn, help when you can.
But do not presume to guide. Do not interfere.
Man’s destiny was his own--even though it now was the destiny of the ancient race as well. The young, they knew, must shape their own world. Man had once spread himself to the stars and had nearly destroyed himself. Now he was stirring once again for another effort at Community. The Vulk understood that it would come--or not. Though their own existence depended on the still half-animal race that barely tolerated them, they dared help in only the smallest, most gentle ways. For if men should come to know
all
about the Vulk, they would turn on them in genocidal fury. That, Vulk Asa and all his people knew, was the present nature of Man.

And so Vulk Asa, resting quietly within the dark corridor of an Imperial Cryonics Hospital, surrounded by savage, ignorant warriors, touched minds gently with his sister-wife Rahel--who would live indefinitely unless some political overthrow changed the ways of Vara-Vyka, in the stone keep of a barbarian warlord.

I long for the sunlight, Asa, and the starry night.

Patience, Sister. It will come.

I am half-blind without a Third for Triad, Brother. Are you stronger? Can you look ahead?

A little way, Rahel. And the signs are good. Dangerous and strange, but good. Glamiss grows in heart and mind.

He is young--even for a man. Very young.

The young will lead the young, Rahel. The knowledge he needs is here, though he does not know it. He hopes for things--for weapons. But perhaps--

Will we ever be free, Asa?

Believe it, beloved.

In their intimacy, their thoughts became stranger, more alien, beyond the understanding of any man. And they contained a thin bright thread of hope. The only two Vulk on the planet discussed Glamiss no more, but both began to hope that he might be the one to strike the spark that would, in the far future, flare into a light of civilization once again--for both Vulk and Man.

It is my hope, Majesty, that it will soon be possible to “record” personality and impress undifferentiated protein molecules with the patterns I have recorded. Should this be, as I have reason to believe, possible, the medical and sociological ramifications will be immense for our people. The learning of great men need not be lost to clinical death. The teaching process may be made infinitely more efficient. And even the notion of cyborg replicas of human beings is not too outré to be considered.

For these reasons, and for others too technical to present to you in this form, I beg Your Majesty to continue your most gracious support of the research being conducted by the Committee on Personality Transfer of the Imperial Medical Services Authority.

--Fragment of a petition requesting the continuation of an Imperial Research Grant.
From the Imperial Archives of Nyor, Golden Age period

In that place in the mountain, beneath the glacier called Trama, the minds of men were stolen from them and sometimes placed in iron boxes. If this were all, it would be bad enough. But there is no limit to the wickedness of the Adversaries. They sometimes released these captive minds in the heads of golem, which we call Cyb, and (may the Star punish them!) even in the minds of other men.

--From the Interregnal legends of Vyka

Glamiss and the girl, Shana, discovered the folk cowering in the shadowy cavern that once had been the exercise area of the ancient hospital. Glamiss’s quick mind divined the purpose of the great hall almost immediately, for though many of the therapy machines were incomprehensible to him, much of the old games equipment was still intact, still racked up along the featureless walls.

The lighting was poor, for only a half dozen of the scores of glow-globes in the distant overhead still functioned. The effect was to cast long shadows and increase the sense of open space. The hall was very large. It was, perhaps, the largest single room Glamiss had ever seen: far bigger than the keep of Ulm’s donjon by the sea. The ceiling could not have been reached by fifty men standing on one another’s shoulders, and the freeform floor was a full three hundred meters across its narrowest part.

The place held all the folk of Trama easily. They huddled in the shadows at the rounded end of the great room, and as Glamiss and the girl appeared from a corridor, a moan of despair rose from the villagers.

Glamiss marched across the wide floor and faced them, his hands on his hips, face stern under his helmet. “I have not come to harm you,” he said harshly.

A stocky man in weyr skins, one of those who had been on the platform with the devil-machines, Glamiss noted, came reluctantly forward.

Shana pushed past the warleader and ran to the Traman. “Shevil,” she said, “tell the folk not to fear.”

The villagers muttered among themselves, and Glamiss impatiently heard the word “Inquisition” again and again. He raised his weaponless hands to show them his intent.

“You do not need to fear the Inquisition,” he said. “There will be no burnings in Trama.”

The hetman Shevil inched forward, his head dipping with a villager’s sullen courtesy. “There is a Navigator with you, Lord. The people do not believe there will be no burnings.” Glamiss’s eyes glittered contemptuously. “Are you so wicked as all that, then?”

Shana turned on him angrily, “Do not use that tone to my father. He is hetman here.”

Glamiss inclined his head with mock politeness. These people were peasants, weyrherders, the nearest thing to animals in all the Great Sky. He could not regard them as anything else. Yet the girl-adept had courage. As a warman, he could at least accept that. And if these creatures were to be useless, at least they must not be a hindrance when Ulm’s levy tried to force the tunnel mouth as they surely would--and soon.

“Hetman of Trama,” he said formally, “I say there will be no burnings. The Nav is my close friend. He does not really believe in burning sinners anyway--”

“He wears the Fist,” one of the villagers said fearfully, and the others took up the complaint. “The Fist. The Red Fist of the Inquisition.”

“Not by his choice, good people,” Glamiss said. And he thought,
good people, indeed--I sound like a politician.
“I am Glamiss Warleader--and it’s true I came into this valley to take your weyr to Ulm. You could have spared yourself this by obeying the laws, you know. No one would ever have known about your Warlock or this place if you had sent your tribute as custom commands--”

“We were hungry, Warleader. Ulm is--”

Glamiss interrupted the hetman sharply. “I know what Ulm is. Better than you. You saw him attack me, man. You saw him drop the stones from the starship.
I break my pledge to Ulm. I break it now.”

The villagers murmured and Glamiss pretended not to hear the fear-tinged voices that said:
“Oathbreaker.“

A heavy business, the abandonment of serious oaths. The villagers knew it and Glamiss knew it even better than they. And, he wondered, how thin have I worn my honor by this? It was true that Ulm had attacked--but hadn’t he, Glamiss, decided to break his pledge to the Lord of Vara-Vyka
before
the attack? Last night? Or, in the Star’s truth, long, long ago?

Glamiss put aside these dark thoughts and spoke again. “Ulm is in the valley now--savaging your houses most probably, though you don’t have anything worth stealing. But he’ll tire of that soon and come up here to the mountain for me--for
you,
for all of us.”

A younger Traman dared to speak up. He said bitterly, “You have killed us, then. There are Navigators in the starship--maybe hundreds of them ...”

“No more than three--possibly four,” Glamiss said dryly. “And if they never get into this place, what will they know of your witch worship? Nothing at all.” He hurried on before they could find fault with that statement, or remember the presence in the mountain of Nav Emeric. “I can keep them out. With my troop I can keep them out of this place until Vyka freezes. But we will need food and water and fare for the horses if we are to withstand a siege. You must provide them.” He fixed them with a cold and appraising stare. “Is there another entrance to these caves?”

“If there is, we do not know of it, Warleader,” the hetman said hopelessly.

“Is there food and drink here, then? The old Warlock doesn’t look starved.”

“He eats magical foods, Warleader,” Shana said. “Pills and worms from tubes. We could not eat such things, nor could you or your mares.”

“Then there’s nothing for it but a foraging party,” Glamiss said bluntly. “You, hetman. What’s your name again?”

“Shevil Lar is his name, Leader of Brigands,” Shana said angrily. “Shevil Lar, Hetman of Trama.”

Glamiss suppressed an impulse to grin at her anger. “I think the wrong person is hetman of Trama,” he said. “But never mind. Shevil Lar, then. You must make up a foraging party to go out and drive in some weyr and bring water from the river. Ulm’s men will still be in the village looting for a time. If you hurry, you might make it before he scrapes a siege plan from the empty bowl of his head.”

“But, lord--we are only herdsmen--we--“

Glamiss silenced him with a gesture of angry contempt. “Don’t tell me what you are. I know what you are. I am offering you a chance to be men.” He looked down at Shana’s thin, dark, and intense face. “Organize this, witch woman. Do it now. I’ll see to it that a party of a dozen men is let through the tunnel to the outside. But you had better hurry. Even Ulm won’t keep rooting around in your weyr-sty forever. There is a Bishop-Nav with him and
he
will want to break in here at any cost. Move now, girl.”

“Yes. At
once
, oh, leader of bandits and robbers,” Shana said tartly.

“Use your eagles to scout Ulm’s movements,” Glamiss said.

“
I
know what to do,
Lord,”
the girl said and went to her father.

Glamiss considered saying something more to the huddling villagers; perhaps mapping out a plan for them, or even arming them. But he decided against it. They were herdsmen, as Shevil Lar said, and they knew how to catch their own weyr. They were
not
warriors and he hadn’t time or the inclination to make them into fighting men. All that could come later--if they survived the next days. Meanwhile, he must work with Emeric, who was the only learned man among them all, to unravel some of the mysteries of this imperial place. On that, their ultimate survival might presently depend.

Without further comment, he turned on his heel and went back the way he had come, leaving Shana to deal with the panicky folk of Trama to whom he had bound, all quite inadvertently, his own destiny.

He found the Navigator in a long room at the end of a branching corridor. It was a room such as Glamiss and, he was sure, Emeric had never before seen.

All the lights functioned properly here, so that the place was brightly lit. And never had Glamiss seen such strange and gloriously decorated luxury. Walls and partitions had been painted with strange pictures that were curiously three-dimensional. The scenes depicted were of richly garbed people in gardens, working at incomprehensible tasks with strange yet graceful machines, of starships under construction, of a dozen or more activities he could not guess at. Imperial light-paintings these were. Glamiss had heard of such art treasures, but not one man in a hundred thousand on the Rimworlds had ever actually seen any.