The Adversary - 4 (3 page)

The rivalry between Aiken and Nodonn divided the loyalty of the Tanu forces. At a war feast prior to the Heroic Encounters, Nodonn tried to discredit Aiken by producing Bryan Grenfell and the latter's adverse study of humanity's impact upon the Many-Coloured Land. This aggravated the split between traditionalist Tanu and those loyal to Aiken. The Encounters were won by Firvulag heroes in an upset. Only a victory by Aiken over the ogrish Firvulag general, Pallol One-Eye, could save the day for the Tanu. Aiken told Nodonn and the traditionalists that he could lick the monster if he were allowed to fight in a human way. This was finally permitted. Aiken conquered Pallol and the Tanu were declared overall winners of the Grand Combat.

Heartbroken and bitter over their narrow loss, most of the Firvulag left the White Silver Plain. Only their royalty remained for the award ceremony and its intriguing anticlimax, a duel between Aiken and Nodonn for the battlemastership (and ultimately the kingship) of the Tanu. Virtually the entire flower and chivalry of the Tanu were gathered as witnesses. Brede herself was there to see Mayvar Kingmaker bestow upon Aiken his Tanu name: He was called Lugonn, after the Shining Hero who had fallen at the Ship's Grave a thousand years before, and he was invested with the sacred Spear, now recharged and ready for use again. Nodonn took up a similar weapon, the Sword, which had once belonged to a Firvulag hero.

The two rivals squared off and began their duel just as the cataclysmic flood from the encroaching Atlantic swept over the White Silver Plain.

The mind-cries of the thousands of drowning people roused Elizabeth, and she and her three human companions looked out upon devastated Muriah and a submerged White Silver Plain.

Not all of the combatants and spectators of the last Grand Combat died, however. Most of the Firvulag, already en route home in their boats, survived. Some Tanu were cast ashore by the floodwave or managed to use their metapsychic powers to save themselves. Humans and hybrids in fair numbers swam to safety. Wounded Tanu knights who had retired to Redactor House, together with many members of that guild who attended them, were secure from the floodwaters. Aluteyn Craftsmaster and a rabble of craven knights floated to safety aboard the vessel in which they were to have been incinerated. Aiken Drum rode the flood inside a ceremonial cauldron and later rescued Mercy.

But more than half of the glorious Tanu, who were especially vulnerable to immersion, perished. Profoundly shocked and torn from her self-centred despair, Elizabeth finally undertook the guardian role that the dead Brede bequeathed to her, and coordinated the evacuation of Muriah with the help of Chief Burke, Basil, Sister Amerie, and the powerful redactors Dionket and Creyn.

The Postdiluvium saw an entirely new balance of power take form in the Many-Coloured Land. Sharn and Ayfa became comonarchs of the Firvulag and inaugurated unprecedented reforms, including the domestication of animals, the utilization of contraband Milieu weapons, and experiments in metaconcerted mind-offensives. The Firvulag throne patched up a longstanding schism with the mutant Howlers, granted them the franchise, and encouraged the Howler lord Sugoll to resettle the abandoned Firvulag city of Nionel.

After leading the multiracial band of refugees from Muriah to safety, Elizabeth retired to a stronghold on Black Crag in southern France to meditate on her new role and its implications. Creyn the Redactor was among those who chose to attend her. Dionket and certain peace-loving Tanu, Firvulag, and humans went into the remote Pyrenees to join Minanonn the Heretic.

Felice, now completely insane, lived in an eyrie on Mount Mulhacen in southern Spain and frequently shape-shifted into the form of a giant raven. Her cave contained an immense trove of scavenged golden torcs and also the Spear of Lugonn, which she had retrieved from the deepening New Sea. Felice was obsessed with the idea of finding Culluket the Interrogator, whom she called her "Beloved." She also felt persecuted by the "devils" who had helped her breach the Gibraltar Gate.

Felice's devil voices were by no means imaginary. Far away in North America lay the Ocala Island settlement of the Metapsychic Rebellion survivors. Twenty-seven years earlier, the fleeing Rebels had forced their way into Madame Guderian's establishment and passed through the time-gate into the Pliocene, taking with them a great store of equipment. When their leader, Marc Remillard, discovered that Europe was under the control of exotics, he withdrew beyond the Atlantic. The Tanu who tried to stop him were badly beaten in a skirmish, and the incident was expunged from Tanu history.

For most of the intervening years, Marc Remillard had devoted himself to his star-search, hoping to find another world with advanced mentalities. His companions eventually dwindled to forty-three, and there were now, in addition, thirty-two mature children and a handful of third-generation youngsters living on the island, vegetating or chafing in idleness according to their individual temperaments.

For years the adult children of the Rebels had watched events in the Many-Coloured Land as a respite from boredom, yearning hopelessly for the sophisticated Milieu that their parents had tried to dominate. When Felice sent out her telepathic appeal at Gibraltar, the children prevailed upon Marc and the other elders to join them in assisting her, linking in a metaconcert to channel a psychocreative blast through Felice. Ever since the Flood, ringleaders among the rebel children had been importuning Felice telepathically, but she was terrified by the voice of the "devils" and refused to respond. Marc and most of the members of his generation dismissed the European catastrophe as a moment's diversion, but their children believed that the postdiluvial chaos in the Many-Coloured Land afforded them a unique opportunity to escape from their dead-end existence in the Pliocene.

In Europe, the rising star in the devastated Tanu kingdom was none other than the incorrigible Aiken Drum, who now styled himself Aiken-Lugonn Battlemaster and presided as usurper over Nodonn's former city of Goriah in Brittany. Mercy, bowing to expediency and believing that her beloved Nodonn was dead, assisted Aiken in his bid to take over the vacant Tanu throne and promised to marry him at the Grand Loving festivities in May.

Many surviving Tanu-including most of the Tanu-human hybrids-flocked to the banner of the metapowerful youth. The conservatives rallied round Celadeyr of Afaliah, one of the few surviving fullblooded battle heroes.

Culluket the Interrogator attached himself to Aiken as a sort of Grand Vizier-not only because he perceived the human upstart as the main chance, but also in hopes that Aiken could protect him from the madwoman Felice, still searching relentlessly for her "Beloved."

During the winter rainy season, Firvulag forces began a systematic series of attacks upon outlying Tanu cities and Lowlife villages-this in spite of an armistice that had been proclaimed in the aftermath of the Flood. The Firvulag monarchs Sharn and Ayfa blamed the raids on renegade Howlers and stoutly maintained that they were in favour of Aiken's pacification scheme. This involved the abolition of the Grand Combat (and the other fighting between Firvulag and Tanu) and the substitution of a nonlethal "Grand Tourney" in its place. This would be celebrated on the Firvulag Field of Gold outside Nionel-traditional alternate to the Tanu White Silver Plain, which had been disused for the forty years of Tanu supremacy in the Combat. The Firvulag artisans crafted a new trophy, the Singing Stone, to take the place of the Sword of Sharn, presumed lost in the Flood.

In order to cement the new Tanu-Firvulag Entente, it was planned that Firvulag royalty would for the first time attend the Tanu Grand Loving festival in Goriah as honoured guests of Aiken and Mercy. When certain Tanu nobles showed a reluctance to attend this event, suspecting that Aiken would take the occasion to proclaim himself king, the usurper gathered his forces and undertook a "progress" in order to intimidate the vacillators. The progress was ultimately successful, but stubborn old Celadeyr of Afaliah capitulated only after Aiken defeated him in a mental duel.

At about the same time that Aiken began his progress, early in April, the Rebel children in Ocala finally managed to contact Felice. They made extravagant promises to the madwoman and she agreed to meet with them if they came to Europe. The children planned to use Felice's awesome power for their own ends-which ultimately included building a new time-warp device that would give them access to the Milieu. Ringleaders among the younger generation included Marc's son, Hagen, and daughter, Cloud. The formidable Marc was at first utterly opposed to the plan. A two-way time-gate, he said, would allow Milieu authorities access to him.

The children swore that they would destroy the Pliocene gate after passing through, so that their elders would remain secure. In an attempt to temporize, Marc agreed to let Cloud, three other young people, and his own contemporary Owen Blanchard sail to Europe to meet with Felice. He forbade Hagen to go, telling his only son he was needed to assist in the star-search. Hagen, who had long feared and envied his powerful father, now actively hated Marc and schemed to escape his dominance.

Back in Goriah, Mercy gave birth to Agraynel, her child by King Thagdal, and mourned the loss of Nodonn. She agreed to marry Aiken even though she did not love him and knew that the young man's infatuation for her was deeply tinged with fear-and even menace.

Unknown to Mercy, Nodonn was not dead. Cast up by the flood upon the distant Isle of Kersic (Corsica-Sardinia), he was rescued by Huldah, a simple-minded woman of Firvulag-human ancestry, and her malevolent grandfather, Isak. After lying unconscious for nearly five months, Nodonn awoke. He discovered to his horror that he was paralysed and bereft of one hand, and that Huldah had been using him as a helpless love object while she tended him. With his telepathic calls muted by the cave rock around him, Nodonn endured Huldah's devotion and Isak's mockery.

Freeliving Lowlife humans, in the forests adjacent to the Firvulag capital, High Vrazel, had set up iron-mining villages shortly after the fall of Finiah. The "blood-metal" was poisonous to both exotic races, and humans hoped to secure their own independence by forging iron weapons. A metallurgical engineer, Tony Wayland, who had enjoyed a privileged position in Finiah under the Tanu, was forced by Lowlife captors to work in the mines. He ran away, together with an eccentric companion, Dougal, hoping to gain both sanctuary and restored privileges from Aiken Drum. Instead, Tony and Dougal were taken by Howlers to refurbished Nionel just in time for the Firvulag Grand Loving.

In Goriah, Aiken returned from his progress exhausted in mind and body. Securing a portable force-field to screen, himself against attempts on his life, he showed Mercy an enormous cache of contraband Milieu armament and other equipment that Nodonn had secreted in the dungeon of the Castle of Glass. He fully expected the visiting Firvulag nobles to attempt assassination during the upcoming Grand Loving.

On 27 April the boat bearing Cloud Remillard and her confederates arrived at the mouth of the Rio Genii in Spain. Vaughn Jarrow, one of the Rebel children, infuriated Felice by killing dolphins. She annihilated him and mortally wounded the boat's skipper, Jillian Morgenthaler. Calmed by the elderly Rebel Owen Blanchard, Felice nearly fell into a trap that would have put her under control of the North Americans. She was saved by a telepathic warning from Elizabeth, who urged her to come to Black Crag for treatment of her mental illness.

Felice finally agreed and flew away in raven guise, leaving the shaken Cloud, Owen, and Elaby Gathen wondering what to do next. Marc was inaccessible, locked away in cerebroenergetic equipment scrutinizing distant stars. It seemed obvious that the only course left was to make a friendly approach to Aiken Drum.

The usurper of Goriah was busy with other affairs, however.

As a preliminary to the Tanu celebration, he took King Sharn on a Flying Hunt in which the Firvulag ruler barely escaped a fierce plesiosaur. Sharn suspected (correctly) that Aiken had set him up. Later, Sharn and his stalwarts did their metaconcerted best to mind-blast Aiken but they were not yet skilled enough to harm him.

The Grand Loving of Tanu shocked the straitlaced Firvulag visitors. There were murmurings about an upcoming Nightfall War-presumably a resumption of the ancient conflict of Tanu and Firvulag in the Duat Galaxy, which had been interrupted by Brede's offer of exile a thousand years ago.

On May Day, Aiken married Mercy. Having impressed or intimidated the majority of Tanu, he proclaimed himself king with the blessing of Elizabeth, and named a new High Table that included both his friends and certain former enemies.

Among the latter were Celadeyr of Afaliah and Kuhal Earthshaker, a blood-brother to Nodonn being nursed back to health after rescue by Celadeyr.

Simultaneously, the Grand Loving of Firvulag took place in the Howler city of Nionel. Humiliation of the Howler brides was averted when they were chosen in the Bridal Dance by lovestarved Lowlife males, who could not see the true monstrous shapes behind the attractive feminine illusions. Among the bewitched were Tony and Dougal, who awoke the next morning to find that they were wed to devoted she-goblins.

In the cave on Kersic, Huldah celebrated the Grand Loving by dressing the paralysed Nodonn in his glass armour and embracing him. Wicked old Isak spied on the couple. Nodonn's disgust and fury were so intense that he regained his strength, thrust away Huldah, and killed the wretched old man. He would have slain the woman as well, but Isak had tauntingly ordered him to "look inside" her before doing so.

Exerting his farsight, Nodonn discovered that Huldah was pregnant with his son. Here in the cave, shielded from sublethal solar radiation that had rendered him all but sterile for some 800 years, Nodonn had engendered the heir he had so long desired. Sparing Huldah, he told her to care for the child when it was born and wait for his instructions. Then he left the cave and sent out a telepathic call to Mercy, informing her that he was alive.

In Ocala, Hagen Remillard had finally worked up the courage to defy his terrible father. While Marc continued his futile starsearch, Hagen and the rest of the Rebel children and grandchildren fled the island, heading for Europe after disabling pursuit.