Part 3 (1/2)

In the small hours, Nodonn and his knights attacked the forewarned Aiken. The trickster brought down the aircraft, and one planeload of invading Tanu perished. The 200 led by Nodonn and Celadeyr and Kuhal Earthshaker attained the Castle of Gla.s.s and engaged Aiken's forces in a pitched battle. Aiken had been able to muster only a skeleton army of defenders, but most of these were equipped with Milieu weapons such as laser carbines and stun-guns. They gained the upper hand.

Nodonn came upon Mercy's body, now nothing but a form composed of grey ash, still wearing its golden torc. At the same moment that he told Mercy farewell, Nodonn heard Aiken's voice commanding him to come out of the castle for their final encounter.

Hovering in midair, the pair took up the duel that had been interrupted by the Flood so many months ago. Nodonn was the princ.i.p.al aggressor, blasting Aiken with the photon weapon as well as with his mind's energies. Aiken seemed barely to defend himself, hiding instead inside a psychocreative bubble. Those in the castle left off their fighting to watch the fantastic conflict.

When it seemed that Aiken's force-s.h.i.+eld was weakening, Nodonn gambled everything on two final strokes that drained the Sword. The little human disappeared in a blinding globe of light ... but when it dissipated, he was still there, uns.h.i.+elded, alive, and ready to put an end to it. The witnesses had seen Nodonn do his utmost. Now it was Aiken's turn.

Disdainfully, the power of the Nonborn King sent both Sword and Spear hurtling away. Using only his mind, Aiken struck.

As Mercy had gone, so went Nodonn-his mind subsumed, his body reduced to ash, his blackened silver hand falling toward the sea, only to be caught up and borne aloft in triumph by Aiken.

Across the Atlantic on Ocala Island, Marc Remillard had been watching. Now he was prepared to put his own plans into action.

It was 25 August. Exactly one year before, Aiken and the other members of Group Green had pa.s.sed through the timegate into the Pliocene.

Now read the fourth and final volume of The Saga of Pliocene Exile, which begins with a flashback to the time of the great fight with Felice at the Rio Genii-and then picks up the main thread of the chronicle immediately after Aiken's victory over Nodonn.

PROLOGUE ONE.

It had happened, just as Elizabeth had known it would; and there was no metapsychic prolepsis involved in the foretelling, only logic and inevitability, given those protagonists: Aiken Drum, Felice Landry, and Marc Remillard.

The last reverberations of the great psychocreative blast had dissipated. The four observers still hung high above Spain, out of range, inside the protective bubble spun by the mind of Minanonn the Heretic.

”Felice is surely dead,” he observed.

”Her thoughts and her image are snuffed out.” Creyn was noncommittal.

”Which proves nothing,” muttered Dionket Lord Healer.

Elizabeth's ranging fa.r.s.enses, so much more powerful than those of the three Tanu, could provide no positive rea.s.surance at that high alt.i.tude. Felice, if she lived, was buried beneath the enormous landslide. ”I think it's safe for us to descend,” she said. ”We must take the risk. There are casualties needing help ... ”

A swift warning pa.s.sed between Dionket and Minanonn: Maintain your s.h.i.+eld at maximum strength Brother!

The three exotic men and the human woman felt no flow of air as they glided down through smoke-layered twilight. They were isolated from the stench of the burning jungle, the steam rising from the diverted Rio Genii, the dust still rolling up from the rockfall that had pushed the river from its bed and overwhelmed part of Aiken's flotilla.

”So many dead and wounded at the margin of the landslide,” the Heretic mourned. ”There lies Artigonn, my late sister's son.

And Aluteyn Craftsmaster, may Tana grant him peace! He would not abjure the ancient battle-religion, even though his heart rejected it.”

”I see the King.” Dionket's farsight showed a vision of Aiken flung up on a gravel bank downstream, his body in its golden suit stiffened, his heart stopped, and mind contracted to a screaming nub.

”You and Creyn go to him,” Elizabeth said. The four touched down upon a great flat rock crusted with burnt vegetation, an island amid foaming dirty water. ”You'll be able to keep him alive until I come. There are plenty of uninjured survivors. The majority escaped harm, I think. Organize rescue parties for the wounded. Minanonn and I will join you ... after I find out what happened to Felice.” After I search this place where she fell, a meteor self-consummate; and how my mind still shrinks from the memory of her mind's last cry: agony and regret, to be sure-but triumph?

”The monster is dead, as Minanonn said. And the G.o.ddess be thanked!” Creyn's face was crimson-lit by flames. ”Let us go, Lord Healer.” Borne by Dionket's psychokinesis, the two redactors vanished into the murk.

Elizabeth and Minannon stood on the charred ruin of the islet, the protective sphere of psychoenergy now extinguished.

All around them half-submerged trees thrust from the water, trailing broken lianas in the debris-laden current. A few were still afire. In others, terrified monkeys and other jungle creatures shrieked and hooted piteously.

Elizabeth's eyes were closed, her mind searching again, exerting itself to the utmost in order to fa.r.s.ense underground. Drifting bits of ash and soot settled onto her hair and jumpsuit.