Saint Antony's Fire

by Steve White

  "But Aristotle has clearly explained—" Dee began, before the Queen shushed him.

  "In fact," Tyralair continued, ignoring him, "it is my belief that you moved in this state by sheer force of will. Your bodies went through the motions of walking as a matter of automatic, conditioned reflex, in response to commands from your minds to move from one place to another. This would account for the lack of apparent physical effort you noticed."

  Shakespeare clearly hadn't been listening to this last part. He looked thoughtful, and a bit queasy. "What if we had returned to the solid world while our bodies—or part of our bodies—had been 'coexisting in the same volume of space' with, say, a wall . . . or a person?"

  Winslow, to whom this rather gruesome thought had not occurred, now understood why the young actor looked queasy.

  "The consequences would, of course, have been most regrettable," said Tyralair, still speaking in the same more-than-half-distracted way. "But I consider the possibility remote. The return requires a mental effort on your part, and I believe your minds would shy away from making the effort under such circumstances. Of course," she added in a tone altogether too detached for Winslow's taste, "it would be interesting to see if the mental barrier could be surmounted."

  "Well," Winslow said hastily, before she could suggest making the experiment, "at any rate we're back. We thought that you, Dr. Dee, and you, Tyralair, would be interested in our experiences."

  " 'Interested'!" blurted Tyralair. "I should say so! This opens up wholly new and unsuspected ramifications of your human ability to pass through portals. Of course, the question of whether you can do so at portals which the Grella have not yet opened up—'latent' portals, one might call them—remains unanswered."

  "Even if we can," Walsingham observed, "the ability would have no usefulness. How could we know where such portals are?" He had initially been transfigured by the espionage possibilities, only to come down to earth with a bump as he remembered that nothing worth spying on was accessible to Croatoan Island. "Only by an incredibly unlikely chance would we stumble across one."

  "Probably true," Tyralair admitted. "Although, given how difficult it is for the Grella to locate latent portals, they could be more common than we have assumed. Quite common, in fact."

  "Yes!" said Dee eagerly. "Such unexpected transpositions in the distant past could be the source of any number of tales. And perhaps people who returned tried to mark the locations." He took on a faraway look. "All those circles of standing stones . . ."

  "A fascinating possibility," said Riahn dryly. "But another question that remains unanswered—and one with somewhat more immediate practical significance—is whether we Eilonwë have the same ability as you humans to effortlessly pass through portals that the Grella have opened."

  "And if so," Tyralair took his thought one step further, "can we also linger in the Near Void at will, and depart from it anywhere, as we now know humans can do?" She turned to Winslow. "Now that we know you can locate the portal reliably, perhaps we can finally answer these questions."

  "Er . . . perhaps, my lady." He didn't know how else to address Tyralair. "But I caution you that there are hazards involved in reaching that hillside. Recall what happened to us when I insisted on trying it!"

  "And after our escape," Virginia Dare added grimly, "the Grella will surely be patrolling the nearer fringes of the old city, although they still don't seem to suspect the hill slope itself."

  "Yes," Walsingham sighed. "A pity." He had relinquished his visions of exploiting the Near Void's possibilities for spying—at least as far as Earth was concerned. Here, however . . . "You say, Mistress Dare, that it's about thirty miles from the portal to the Grella fortress at the other portal? Hmm . . . Only a two-day trek for the young and fit, especially considering that it would be less wearisome than it would normally be, from what you've told us."

  "One moment, my Moor!" The Queen leaned forward, reading his thoughts. "Are you scheming to send your agents through this Faërie-like realm of the 'Near Void' to the Grella fortress to spy it out?" Riahn stared open-mouthed; it was clearly a novel thought.

  "Well, Your Majesty, the thought naturally crossed my mind. Invisibility . . . The ability to pass through walls . . ." The spymaster took on a dreamy look.

  "We couldn't hear sounds from the real world, sir," Virginia Dare reminded him, "any more than we ourselves could be heard."

  "The ability would scarcely be missed, as no one can understand the Grella tongue anyway." Walsingham looked for confirmation to Riahn, who nodded. "Yes . . . the possibilities . . ."

  "Mr. Secretary," said Winslow, before he had fully worked out in his own mind what he was saying, "are you sure that's all you want to do?"

  "Eh?" Walsingham blinked away his reverie. "What do you mean, Thomas?"

  "You're forgetting that in addition to passing through the world in a ghostlike state, we can come out of that state wherever we wish."

  "But then you'd no longer be invisible and invulnerable. And you'd be unable to resume that state, for you can only enter the Near Void at the portal. You'd be discovered."

  For just an instant, before answering, Winslow let himself savor the undreamed-of sensation of being a step ahead of Walsingham. "All very true, Mr. Secretary, and a great disadvantage—if all you're interested in is spying. But everyone who's ever gone raiding has daydreamed of being able to appear out of thin air inside the enemy's stronghold—just as we appeared here last night." He grinned wolfishly. "Imagine if it had been armed enemies who'd suddenly been among you!"

  "Sweet Jesu!" the Queen breathed. "You are a bold one, Captain Winslow!" Even more gratifying was the look on Virginia Dare's face he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye.

  Riahn found his tongue. "So you would lead a raiding force through the Near Void to the Grella fortress, pass undetected into it, and emerge in their midst?" He shook his head. "Your Queen is right about you, Captain. And with such an advantage of surprise, I'm sure you could wreak fearful slaughter among the Grella. But there are too many of them, and their weapons are too devastating. Besides, Mr. Secretary Walsingham was right: once you left the Near Void, you could not reenter it, thirty miles from the portal. You would be trapped inside the fortress. The Grella would hunt you down like rats and kill you, and the sacrifice would have been for nothing."

  "So it might well turn out, sir—and if we were fools enough to throw away an unsupported raiding party that way, we'd deserve it. But it's something else I have in mind. At the same predetermined time we attack them from within, you Eilonwë attack them from without."

  For a moment, Riahn and Tyralair simply stared, as though not understanding what he was talking about. It came to Winslow that he had just blithely contradicted thousands of years of brutal experience.

  "Attack them?" Riahn finally repeated. "You mean . . . attack them directly? Openly?" His face was a study in automatic rejection of a self-evidently suicidal suggestion. "But . . . but we can't!"

  "I've seen you Eilonwë fight them," said Winslow.

  "Oh, yes: furtive ambushes, pinprick raids. But an all-out frontal attack?" Riahn shuddered. "I think you still don't fully comprehend what their weapons can do. You should listen to those of us who have been fighting them for ages and are, if not wiser, at least more experienced than you."

  "Having felt the heat of Saint Antony's Fire, I think we English have reason to know about their weapons," said Winslow quietly. "And as for your experience fighting them . . . you've never had us raising the Devil with them from within, distracting and disordering them for you. No weapon is any better than the skill and coolness with which it is wielded. The Grella will find it hard to summon up much of either in the midst of panic and chaos."

  Elizabeth Tudor leaned forward in a way that could only be called predatory. "Yes, Sir Riahn! This is an opportunity you've never had before. Will you Eilonwë go on through all that remains of eternity, nipping at their heels like oft-whipped dogs, when now at last you have a chanc
e to leap at their throats?"

  Once again, Riahn's face was easy to read through its alienness. It was a battleground where tantalizing temptation warred with his blood's memory of a thousand ancestors who had lived long enough to beget children because they had been too cautious to throw themselves into the mouths of the Grella hell-weapons.

  "But," he finally temporized, "my sheuath simply doesn't have the numbers to mount a mass attack. No sheuath does."

  "Well, then," the Queen declared, "the answer would seem obvious: form a league with the other sheuaths and field an allied army."

  Riahn blinked several times. "But it's unheard of! The sheuaths have never acted together. You have no idea of the eons of tradition behind their independence, nor of the jealousies that exist among the leaders. They would never agree."

  Walsingham wore the look of a man who at long last found himself back in his own element. "If you will call a conclave of these leaders," he said smoothly, "I may perhaps be able to be of assistance in securing their agreement. I have some small experience in these matters. Ah . . . what was that, Thomas?"

  "Nothing, Mr. Secretary," Winslow wheezed. "Only a cough."

  "One point, Captain Winslow," said John White, speaking up for the first time. His voice held his usual diffidence, but underlying it was a determination none of them had heard before. "If you do essay this venture, I wish to be included in it. Indeed, I will be included in it."

  "No offense, Master White," Winslow said carefully, "but you're no fighting man. You're not one of the sea dogs in my crew, nor one of the English who, like your granddaughter, have been hardened by twenty years' struggle against the Grella in this world."

  "No. But I think I can truly say that I have more reason than most to want vengeance against the Grella. They owe me a blood debt. You are now offering me a chance to collect on it. You must let me come!"

  Winslow exchanged a brief eye contact with Virginia Dare. Much passed between them in that split second. They had, by unspoken common consent, not told her grandfather what they now knew about how Ananias Dare and Eleanor White Dare had met their end. Now, without the necessity for words, they renewed their resolve that he need not know it. They likewise wordlessly resolved that he did, indeed, have the right to seek wergild from the Grella.

  Something else Winslow read in Virginia Dare's eyes in that instant of silent communion. He had never felt the slightest desire to be a Grell, but now the desire was even further from his mind than ever. Indeed, he thought with a shiver, he was very, very thankful that he was not one.

  "Very well," he told John White with a kind of gentle gruffness. "If you think you can keep up, you can come."

  "This is all very well," said Dee in his most portentous voice, "but aren't we forgetting what Captain Winslow told us earlier about the danger of approaching the portal? It is dangerous even for an individual of a small group. How can a large raiding force hope to march up that naked hillside unseen?"

  "That problem is even greater than you think," said Riahn, "for reasons I'll explain later. Nevertheless . . . I believe we can provide a device that will enable you to overcome it. This also I will elaborate upon in due course."

  "You agree to the plan, then?" the Queen asked eagerly.

  "I am at least willing to consider it. My agreement is conditional. I will commit my sheuath to an attack only if the other sheuath leaders agree to do so—an eventuality in which I do not share your confidence, Mr. Secretary."

  "You are perhaps too pessimistic," said Walsingham mildly. "But if I am to provide help I will need for you to give me all available information about the individuals with whom we will be dealing: their ages, personal histories, beliefs, attitudes, habits, relationships . . . and, not least important, how they are regarded by their peers. I refer not just to the sheuath leaders, but to their key aides and advisors as well. And, of course, I will require the history, current status, capabilities and reputations of the sheuaths which they lead, with an emphasis on the positions they have traditionally taken on the overriding question of how best to deal with the Grella. "

  Riahn looked slightly dazed. "Ah . . . this involves a large volume of information."

  "Indubitably. I suggest we confer on the matter tonight, unless you have other pressing business. Fortunately, I have a good memory . . . and at need I can largely dispense with sleep. Not as easily as in my youth, of course. But," Walsingham concluded with his favorite phrase, "knowledge is never too dear."

  The Eilonwë, they discovered, did not personify their sheuaths, as humans did their nations, by giving them names. That kind of group identification was foreign to them. Their loyalties were personal, not to abstractions. The sheuath led by Riahn was referred to simply as Riahn's sheuath, for as long as he led it. And so it was with all the other leaders.

  By devious routes, by night, through the labyrinths of ancient tunnels and ruins, those leaders came in response to Riahn's call. Not all of them that he had invited, of course. Some simply rejected out of hand anything so unprecedented. Others pleaded inability to make the journey in safety—perhaps truthfully. But enough arrived to fill the central chamber to capacity, and to require the removal of some of the surrounding partitions to make room for the overflow. Winslow didn't know the Eilonwë well enough to form an opinion as to whether the sheer novelty of the summons might have something to do with a turnout that exceeded Riahn's dour expectations.

  It soon became obvious that there were no established procedures to govern a gathering like this, and certainly no rules of precedence among leaders who acknowledged no unity above the sheuath level. This wasn't entirely a bad thing, for it meant there were no procedural objections to allowing humans to sit in on the conclave. Some of the Eilonwë from other sheuaths had met the colonists before, and all knew of them. And by now, everyone had learned—with varying degrees of happiness—that new humans had arrived. So there were some stares of frank curiosity but no protests when Walsingham, Dee, Winslow and Virginia Dare took their places among the group that followed Riahn, as similar groups clustered behind the other leaders, in no particular order. ("Worse than Parliament," Walsingham was heard to mutter.) The Queen had not jeopardized the royal dignity by exposing herself to the disorder directly, but rather let her Principal Secretary represent her. He listened with a look of intense concentration as Virginia Dare provided a running translation.

  "From time immemorial," declared Avaerahn, a sheuath leader from a region to the southeast, "the path of wisdom has been clear: avoid provoking the Grella into exerting the full extent of their powers against us. Some have indulged in petty displays of bravado"—a meaningful glance at Riahn—"but in the main we have all followed this prudent policy."

  "And what has it gotten us?" grumbled the dour Imalfar, a nearer neighbor of Riahn.

  "Survival! The Grella could exterminate us if we annoyed them enough to exhaust their patience. If driven to such an extreme, they could render our world lifeless!"

  "Preposterous!" scoffed Imalfar. "This world is too valuable to them. What good would an uninhabitable ball of slag be?"

  "How can we predict what they would do if sufficiently angered?" Avaerahn shot back. "They don't think like us."

  "That's true," intoned Leeriven, a female as the Eilonwë leaders frequently were, and a consistent voice of indecision masquerading as prudence. "It would be unwise to rely on our ability to predict how aliens like the Grella would react to provocation."

  "But," protested Riahn, "have you not been listening? If this works, we'll no longer have to worry about what they will do! If we capture their fortress, sitting there practically atop the portal to their other worlds, with their weapons in our hands—"

  "Yes: if, if, if!" grumbled Avaerahn. "That's all we've heard from you, Riahn. Glittering schemes to free us from the grip of aliens, all of which require us to put our trust in other aliens." He gave the knot of humans behind Riahn a sour look.

  Riahn bristled. "The humans have been among us for
almost twenty years, and they've earned my trust!" Walsingham leaned forward, touched his shoulder, and whispered something in his ear. The Eilonwë nodded and resumed. "Furthermore, they have very good reason to aid us to the utmost. As long as the Grella rule our world, there is always the possibility that they will blunder onto the portal leading to the humans' world—as, indeed, they did long ago—and enslave it. But if we regain control here, those Grella now infesting the human world will be isolated, with no possibility of reinforcement."

  "Riahn has a point, Avaerahn," said Leeriven, agreeing as was her wont with the last speaker.

  "Yes, yes . . . But still, we simply can't attack the Grella directly. It's never been done before. It's without precedent. It's . . ."