Part 11 (1/2)

CLOUD: Don't talk like a fool. Even with this information as a tradeoff, we'll have to be extremely careful dealing with him.

Aiken's dangerous, Hagen. Perhaps more dangerous now than Papa.

HAGEN: Bulls.h.i.+t.

CLOUD: In the Goriah duel, Aiken stood up to everything that Nodonn could throw at him-including that photon-cannon Spear. But there was something else. As he killed Nodonn and Queen Mercy, he subsumed their metapsychic complexus.

HAGEN: Say what?

CLOUD: [Image.] A very obscure phenomenon. I remember that the Poltroyan entry in the computer mentioned it in connection with some ancestor-wors.h.i.+p thing. It's very abstruse.

Never fully doc.u.mented among humans. But it seems Aiken did it. The whole Castle of Gla.s.s in Goriah is buzzing with the news. How useful the powers will be to him remains to be seen. Kuhal says some Tanu believe the subsumption may kill Aiken.

HAGEN: Wishful thinking ... Listen, Cloud, we'll have to get his cooperation somehow. We can't fight him for the timegate site, and building the Guderian device will mean batting about from one end of Europe to the other gathering raw materials. To say nothing of conscripting Milieu-trained technicians to work out the trickier bits in building the thing. Our only hope of success depends upon cultivating the goodwill of this brain-gobbling little Dracula. Or coercing him into helping us.

CLOUD: More than that depends on Aiken.

HAGEN: ?.

CLOUD: Kuhal. He and the surviving invaders were taken.

They're imprisoned in Goriah now, incommunicado under a sigma-field, charged with high treason. The penalty for that is death.

CHAPTER THREE.

”You are summoned to judgment,” Commander Congreve announced.

The 129 survivors of Nodonn's defeated little army came together and formed a silent double file with Kuhal Earthshaker and Celadeyr of Afaliah at the head. Having been warned by the smirking human lackeys who brought them supper, the Tanu knights were wearing their gla.s.s armour, cleaned up as well as they could manage. They glowed in splendid defiance-creator cyan and coercer sapphire and psychokinetic rose-gold, with the few combatant fa.r.s.ensors in the company resembling statues carved from s.h.i.+ning amethyst.

A squad of Congreve's human troopers marched in carrying covered baskets. At a mental command they pa.s.sed down the lines of prisoners, distributing sets of crystal chains. Each insurgent freely bound himself or herself with the symbol of submission to Tana, manacles about gauntleted wrists, the central snaplink fastened to the golden torc.

”We are ready,” said Kuhal. Magnificent in halide radiance, he towered over the human commandant of the Goriah garrison.

He eyed the twenty-second-century weapon Congreve carried, incongruous against his exotic parade armour. ”And you will not require that.”

”The sacred chains bind us in honour,” growled old Celadeyr.

Congreve's mental aspect was glacial. ”So did your oath of fealty to King Aiken-Lugonn, which you swore at the Grand Loving! Follow me.” He turned, lifting the Matsus.h.i.+ta laser carbine to a ceremonial port arms, and led the way from the detention barracks into the outer ward of the Castle of Gla.s.s.

Fog swathed the heavily damaged facade. Even though it was less than sixteen hours after the failed attack, much of the debris had already been cleared away. Piles of translucent blocks and the downed tools of workers indicated that repairs were in progress. The faerie lighting of the towers was only a violet-andgold blur tonight, with the overall effect oddly mutilated since the great spire of the castle had been blasted away by Nodonn.

The prisoners pa.s.sed through the scorched ruin of the main gate and into the central keep. Most of the corridors had been cleaned up, and only an occasional melt-scar or boarded cas.e.m.e.nt remained as souvenirs of the desperate fighting that had taken place.

The knights marched along bearing their chains proudly, their metapsychic luminosity overwhelming the lesser light of the oilfuelled wall sconces. At length they came into the main audience chamber of the Goriah citadel, which the usurper had caused to be almost completely refurbished. The floor was tiled in gold and midnight-purple. Pillars of twisted amber gla.s.s supported a high vaulted ceiling spangled with tiny starlike lamps. The dais was the only bright place in the room. Behind it shone the precious-metal sunburst of Nodonn Battlemaster, retained by the usurper because a solar disk had also been the traditional heraldic cognizance of the first-coming Lugonn. But the ornamental sun-face was blank now, its apollonian smile gone along with recollections of drifting ashes and a tarnished silver hand tumbling out of the dawn sky.

In the place of honour stood a black-marble throne, surrounded by twenty lesser seats, all empty. On the throne sat a little human eating an apple: the Nonborn King of the ManyColoured Land. He had evidently just come in out of the mist, for he wore a Tanu-style storm suit of golden leather still glistening with beads of moisture. Its visored hood was thrown back and the neck open. Aiken-Lugonn's throat was bare. He required no artificial stimulus to mental operancy.

The prisoners came before the dais and waited while Congreve made his brief telepathic announcement and then retired with the guard detail to the shadows in the rear of the hall.