by Ian Wallace
Castle Caerless had also a number of two-and three-story buildings that were sparsely windowed in a slit-defensive way; and the large main structure was topped by a square five-story turret with a crenellated crest: this tower overtopped the forward drawbridge threateningly. And yet, even this early-type fortress had its luxuriant charms: see there, a woman with long blond hair hung out of a second-story window…
Hovering in air ten yards before the face of this woman, I lost my heart. And I knew that my desire-love was incestuous. And then, rethinking, I comprehended that it was not incestuous, not in the soul. Once my mother had been like this; but even as a child I had not known her like this, for a young mother is not young to her child. And when I had grown into the age of desire, she had been much older and we had grown remote from each other: no thought of desire for her then—or afterward, in retrospect. Now, a full man, I came upon a young woman who was arrestingly beautiful, and I desired her; and if my knowledge of her motherhood to me, indeed my misty remembering of careless-loving childhood intimacy, piquantly flavored spontaneous desire, this irrelevancy was to be dismissed. Put it that instantly I understood how it must be with Pelleon…
She leaned elbows on the sill of the open window (whose tiny disk panes marvelously were colored glass). She was no more than twenty; her face was smooth long-oval, her eyes wide apart and serene blue, her nose a Dresden trifle, her mouth middlingwide and middling-full, her hair a long-flowing flaxen wonder, her throat long and fair, her breasts firm and deep…
Behind me there was cheering; but before I turned, I appraised the expression on Gueraine’s face. She was intent on near-distance below. She was looking at whatever was causing the cheering.
It was time for me to turn…
The roads around Castle Caerless were a labyrinth of ways that snaked among bold little salients of the surrounding forest. Along one of these ways, now disappearing, now reappearing, jaunted an armed warrior on a huge crazy steed that I well remembered. People were scatteredly cheering the warrior in front of the castle. Not all the people were commoners: there were knights in the crowd, and there seemed no curb on their enthusiasm either.
I floated over to the approaching knight. His black steed faintly resembled a tyrannosaur, lumbering along on two great ground-devouring hind legs, balancing itself with a massive-restless tail, pawing air with two ridiculously tiny-futile hands; but it was entirely mammalian, something between an ungulate and a marsupial: a graul. (Behind the knight, a squire rode a four-legged assish thing.) In all other respects, though, the knight was what might be expected by anybody sophisticated enough to expect that fifth-century knights on Erth would be more primitive than the late-medieval archetype immortalized by Geoffrey of Monmouth and Sir Thomas Mallory. This knight was bareheaded, and his black hair was restless-unruly. He wore no iron at all—only very heavy leather—except that his leathern gauntlets were viciously iron-spiked about the knuckles. A great round hardwood shield, cross-bound and knobbed with iron, hung to the left of his equipage that fell a great deal short of being a saddle. He did carry a hardwood lance socketed in a rest on the right flank of his graul; and this lance had an iron beak, it was not for idle jousting; but it was little more than two yards long, designed for mounted infighting or perhaps for throwing…
From his manner of riding, I recognized him with difficulty as Pelleon—whose memory-image for me was fiftyish, gray-haired, gentle. But this was the early-thirty Pelleon whom I had never known. He rode with grace. His face was young—the drooping black mustache did not detract from his youth. And it was an earnest-courteous face, hard-merciful. This was a powerful knight who would win and win and would never stoop to crudity or false play. This was a man who always won, honestly.
I followed whither his great deep gray eyes gazed.
His eyes were on the Lady Gueraine, who leaned from the window.
Waving to the people with a kind of cordial abstraction, Pelleon crossed the bridge (with me just behind him) and put his graul into a curious dancing curvet at a point of vantage just beneath the queen’s window. Standing in his stirrups (which were no more than loops of braided thong), he let his left hand fall to the haft of his sword; and he inclined his head low, with his thick black hair falling over his forehead; and his mind said, “My Gueraine,” while her lips replied silently, “Pelleon.”
He raised his head, then, and engaged her eyes; and the love that passed between them was unmistakable and deep. The people gawked; the random knights came to something like attention out of pure respect. Why were they not concealing this love? I comprehended: Pelleon and Grayle meant it for holy lady worship, and the people took it for that, and quite probably King Grayle took it for that, so there was no need for concealment and indeed every chivalrous reason for publicity.
Gueraine gently broke their trance by drawing together the glassed window shutters, disappearing. The astonishingly handsome-powerful-intense young Pelleon gazed a few moments longer—penetrating, I was sure, the shutters. Then he dropped his head and rode slowly away, while the people began to cheer again.
He did not, however, get far. A husky scowling blond-mustachioed knight reached up to grasp his stirrup (for the bridle hung high) and horned at Pelleon: “I said it publicly in thine absence, and I say it now publicly in thy presence: thou’rt making a whore of our king’s worshipful queen!”
The people made shocked noises and crowded around. They were now fairly into the broad fair court. I noticed, looking over the heads, an unpretentious lean redhead in shirtsleeves and loose long woolen trousers leaning against a thin square pillar, one arm twined high about the pillar, watching; instantly I had a vague feeling about this nondescript .watcher, but the feeling did not rise to the level of intelligence…
Easing his lance into a lateral rest, Pelleon folded arms and looked lazy down. “I love thy foul mind, Scans, but not when our worshipful queen is in it. For in my mind she is not whored, but worshiped.”
The square challenging chin went higher. “Worshiped she may be in thy mind, but whored she is in thy bed.”
Pelleon lost languor and stiffened alert. The shirtsleeved watcher on the distant veranda hung his other arm high around the pillar and leaned forward.
Now the voice of Pelleon came low, even, unstrained. “Thou knowest, Scans, that if I kick thy throat, thou’rt a dead man.”
“Thou’rt not too noble to whore the queen, Pelleon, but nevertheless thou’rt too noble to kick my throat.”
Another stillness. Then Pelleon: “Remove thy fist from my stirrup so I can get down on equal ground with thee.”
Scans moved back, keeping his head high. Except for a poniard, he was unarmed, unprotected; Pelleon was leatherned and sworded.
Dropping to the ground, Pelleon signaled to his squire. The man came forward and helped him off with his gauntlets and leather jacket and boots and pants, leaving him barefoot and wearing only worsted underpants that came down to just above his knees. Standing loose-armed before Scans, Pelleon said softly: “Draw thy poniard and attack.”
Scans, who was as large a man as Pelleon, drew his poniard and dropped it on the ground. He said: “Thou’rt whoring her.” Pelleon stepped in, and his bare fist crushed the teeth of Scans.
Letting go the pillar, the distant redhead—whose hair was not really red, but ruddy-brown—shook his bowed head mournfully, turned his back, and disappeared into the villa.
While two helped Scans away, Pelleon looked calmly about at the people. “I serve my king,” he said, “and I worship my queen, and my saintly queen worships her king.”
He waited.
They cheered.
He moved away, leading his graul by a high stirrup.
I followed Ruddyhair. Thrillingly I knew now who he was!
The king, my presumptive father—the red-auburn fellow—was seated on a great armchair-throne in a private room, gnawing on a knuckle. As a youth, this Grayle had been miraculously designated king of a small province in an incident invo
lving a sword and a stone, and he had been reluctant, but he had thereafter organized knights and expanded his dominion to all the Island of Caerleon. In battle, no single champion had been more worshipful. Kings had crossed the sea to join him. One of them was Pelleon.
In my childhood, I had seen the king, my probable father, as a giant. In our final encounter, I had seen him with the eyes of childhood. Now, in my maturity (a rather considerable maturity, if years are what count), I contemplated this mighty champion of arms in his early thirties. With luck he might weigh 140 pounds. Pelleon, by contrast, must be pushing 180 without any fat anywhere.
The posture of skinny King Grayle was all ungainly. He leaned forward in hard thought, chewing a knuckle, the other hand (long, long) draped over a chair arm; the elbow that belonged to the worried knuckle was propped on a bony bare knee whose sandaled foot pressed a foot rest, while the other leg stretched random-out to drag a heel on the floor. The face on Grayle was long-slender, the eyes were blue-deep, the brows were hard-down, the forehead was high-creased, the nose was long-pinched, the mouth was wide-thin-puzzled, the chin was unimportant.
This was King Grayle, who in a scant fifteen years had possessed and unified and now wholly dominated the Island of Caerleon. The ingredients of his dominion were one part force of arms, one part force of will, one part intelligent persuasiveness, one part devotion to friendship and justice.
Instantly I felt a thing against entering the brain of Grayle. Instead, having delicately fingered his memory banks to bring off a swift and discreet but adequate sampling of his life continuity, I materialized on a nearby chair in the likeness of Grayle’s long-dead father, King Otter.
Faintly distracted by my materialization, Grayle glanced up, nodded, said, “Ah, Father,” and went back into thought.
“I don’t know how thou knowest me,” I protested, “since never didst thou see me in my living since thou wert at pap.”
“One grasps these things,” Grayle murmured. “Excuse me a moment, I am almost on to something—” He thought hard a little longer. He shook his head impatiently. He looked up as though seeing me for the first time. “I crave thy pardon, Father. Welcome to my poor palace.”
“Thou hast done well with this poor palace,” I asserted. “I remember when I used its beginnings for a summer house, it could barely stable two graul. I am proud of thee.”
Grayle’s blue eyes suddenly shone. “Art thou? I think of thee often, my father. I am only building on thy foundation. I could never have done what thou didst, and thou couldst have done far more than I have done hadst thou been a-building on my poor foundation—”
“Cut it,” I suggested boldly. “The Kazans have thrown out those thees and thous, and I think you ken Kazan.” I was referring to the dominant civilization of this planet Arcady: the name of that sophisticated empire was Kaza, and it maintained tenuous relations with Caerleon after once having dominated Caerleon.
The pensive thin mouth suddenly flashed teeth in a wide grin. “Ohe, you are my father—or a monstrous good scalawag! Let us then talk Kazan-sophisticated. Where did you learn it? in Hell?”
In Hell I might have learned it; in fact, I had learned it right here on Arcady; either idea was too complicated for expression. “That,” I remarked, “I’ll pass. You must pick me up on your program here, Son. I know about you conquering Caerleon and all; but I am damned if I know why Caerleon is so primitive while Kaza is so advanced.”
His brows came down. “You won’t criticize?”
I grinned. “Not as a father. As an equal, King Grayle. And as between peers, if I weren’t critical, you wouldn’t like me.”
His grin came back, easy, easy. “Yes, it is my father that you are.”
I went serious. “No, I am not.”
The Grayle smile wavered. “You are not?”
“I do not like hypocrisy, and I discard it. I used this disguise to enter your confidence. I now respect you, and I will have your confidence man to man or I will not have it.”
The thin mouth hardened. “Assume your true form.” It was a crisp command, I felt subordinate to it.
Transmuting myself to my Pan-body, I stood discomfortably before Grayle in what had to be the most anomalous situation in my memory. From having been his father, I had become his presumptive son, before him visibly in my truth: red hair, blue eyes, all of it—different only in age (the apparent difference between eighteen and thirty-six) from the way he had last seen me. And I worried that he would recognize me. And this worry was utterly ludicrous—because when he had last seen me was nineteen years later than this date when now I challenged him; and on this date I had not yet been conceived.
And of course he stared at me without recognition as I told him: “My name is Pan. In a twisted way, it is true that I am a man long dead. Otherwise, all was false.”
Grayle’s mouth did not change. “To make an understatement, I am disappointed that you are not really my father. I would like to have said to him the things I have said to you. Do you have access to him?”
“I will seek access.”
“When you find him, report this.”
“If I find him, I will.”
“Good. Continue now with your self-clarification.” The face was still hard; and now I thoroughly comprehended the human intensity that had driven Grayle past his own physical inferiority to become a winning champion.
I temporized: “It would not be possible for me to appear in my natural ghost-guise to a king of the Kazans—they have abolished all supernatural beliefs, they would conclude either that I was a deceiver or that they were mad. Here on this island Caerleon, though, it seems that I can appear frankly as a ghost and be believed by the king. And yet the king is wise. Pray begin by telling me about this, why it is.”
The mouth was a shade less grim. “Explain first the nature of your interest.”
“You have problems. I do not offer you any magical aid, it would be unfair. But I give you opportunity to talk them out with someone whom you can trust because he will talk to nobody else.”
“Prove that you are supernatural.”
I disappeared and reappeared.
“Very good,” Grayle commented, a touch of whimsy on his mouth corners. “Are you from the devil? Understand, I would not respect you the less, only—”
“I am not from the devil.”
“From whom, then?”
I was hard on the candor-kick. “From someone whose name you know, in a mythological sort of way. From Thoth.” Electrifyingly Grayle rose to his feet. “From Thoth?”
“Did I say something interesting?”
Grayle went back into a crouch on his throne, fingering his chin. “You have not told me, Pan, the planet of your origin. Are you perhaps from Erth?”
“What would a king of Caerleon know about Erth—or any other planet—or about Thoth?”
Grayle brooded upon me. He said: “About forty years ago our planet Arcady was visited by Erthmen. I’m told that it was a bit of a shock wherever their spaceship touched down. We have no such technology on Arcady; and they left us no technologists, only missionaries—”
“Missionaries?”
“I should tell you that I know more about this than do most kings on Arcady because of the wisdom and personal candor of the missionary we got, who later became my teacher. His name was Merleon. Their ship, said Merleon, had been funded and dispatched by an Erth cult calling itself the New Serapis—”
I nodded: by now the New Serapis was one of the most influential cults on Erth, but I was frequenting Grayle three centuries earlier. “They are new,” I remarked, “but already they are very wealthy, able to purchase and fund a number of starships for interplanetary conversions. But I didn’t know any of them had come to Nigel III—” I hadn’t known it—but now I was remembering some things, particularly about this Merleon…Grayle queried: “Nigel III?”
“Arcady. Your planet. It’s the third out from your sun Nigel.”
“Our star, you mean—Merleon
told me privately about that. Anyhow, his ship wondrously touched down at various lands on our Arcady, in Kaza of course, and once near here in the heart of Caerleon; and everywhere it stopped, the ship left one or two or half a dozen missionary-scientists whose task was to propagate knowledge among the elite of each land, enriching its culture without disturbing its culture. And then the ship disappeared, never to be seen again. I suppose it went home.” “Leaving them all here?”
“Yes.”
“I’d think the people of Arcady would kill them!”
“A few did get it, I understand, but mostly they were too interesting and valuable and cunning to get themselves killed. And besides, the new religion they brought was so reassuring to humble people, while at the same time so useful to kings, that their propagation of it was a prime point of their universal value. For instance, you mentioned Thoth—”
I leaned forward.
Grayle frowned. “I can’t go right to that, I have to give you background. These missionaries taught that men, or croyds in our tongue, were created by the great god Atom.” (My brother, are you attentive?) “But Atom was an artist; and before he arrived at thinking up men, he invented more primitive experimental models of intelligent life—like fish, and serpents, and shrews, and apes, and even some crude man-things—until at last he perfected our model which is called croyd. And then, having perfected men, Atom went the next step forward and created the gods who are extra-perfect men; and the purpose of gods is to serve men at their own pleasure while enjoying themselves; and the purpose of men is to worship gods while enjoying themselves. Is it not seductive?”
