Spacebread, the figlet, and Lucidan moved forward, into the glimmering circle of firelight.
“My name is as I have said. I am an agent for the king. The true king, Gallwort. I am his slave. He left me in Black-Black to be his eyes and ears in the matter of VolVarnix’s rule. I am to make an assessment in six moons. But VolVarnix has begun his actions much sooner than I had thought he would. Thanks, I think, to you.”
“Do you know what he’s been doing?” the figlet demanded, then listed a dozen crimes that Basemore the Basilisk had committed against the people, including the destruction of Lucidan’s village. He finished, breathless again.
Sonto smiled grimly. “I have heard most of that, but the king wants the whole story; he must know what VolVarnix’s scheme is. Gallwort appointed him regent to force his hand, believing it wiser to see what VolVarnix’s plan is before the prince is king, than to have a young king with no experience face him. I must return with clear proof of his intentions.”
Lucidan nodded sagely, the firelight coloring her pale eyes. “The old king is good and wise. He has not yet ended his reign.” She lapsed again into silence, as if wrapping herself in solitude. She drifted away from them, her eyes dimming.
Slowly and carefully Spacebread explained her story from the moment her buckle had been stolen to the incident at the Sonweck River, including how she came to know VolVarnix as Basemore the Basilisk. The story was long, and she stared into the fire as she related it, her face growing more and more somber as the bloody moments of the last weeks were revealed.
“I see,” Sonto said dourly after she finished. “It is more sinister than we had guessed. VolVarnix is a known criminal. And yet we do not know his plot. If he challenges the king outright, the people of Both-wil will crush him. Gallwort is the only king to them. And we do not know the truth behind the bizarre theft of your crystal; though rest assured it is of crucial significance to the regent. He would not have tried so strenuously to destroy you otherwise, and thereby tip his hand. What, if I may ask, milady, is your plan?”
Spacebread sighed. “Basemore is at the plantation of Lord Dezorn, near Blik-Twell. Likely, the crystal buckle is there, too. If we can get close enough without their discovering us, we might learn their secret, and the whereabouts of my buckle.”
“But who could get that close without being seen?” Sonto protested.
Spacebread looked slyly at the figlet. “I have a candidate for spy, but for now we all need sleep more than intrigue.”
Klimmit popped off his perch in surprise. Spy? Him? But Spacebread laid her finger before her pursed lips and beckoned him to silence, and he knew it was final.
“I agree,” said Sonto. “Sleep would be a gift tonight. But before I do, I would like to say, milady, that I consider it a great prize to be on this quest with an adventuress so daring and so beautiful.”
Spacebread laughed, a little nervously. Her eyes darted about like trapped butterflies. “Please, save such flattery for the end of our journey, when we shall have more time for indulgence.” Her eyes struck his violet gaze, rested, and she added, “But your courage and strength are welcome. As is your cannon. Lucidan will see for me, but you will be my strong right arm.”
Sonto smiled at her softly, and they began a lighter banter in lowered voices as they gazed into the fire. The figlet’s attention wandered from his mistress, his mind aboil with hints about spying and memories of the day’s fight. He had fought like a Warrior today. “What did you say?” he started, suddenly aware that Lucidan had muttered something.
The old woman did not reply, but remained staring at black nothing with only an occasional twitch of her withered lips to show that she was not a statue. Curiosity lured him, and he moved closer to her.
“How the mighty have fallen,” she whispered. “This false regent would not find us such simpletons had we our former power.”
As though she could sense the figlet’s unspoken question, she continued in a low, haunted voice. “In the times of glory, this world was great, an age ago. We still tell the stories, though we are poor and ignorant now. The world itself cannot forget the days of the Wise Wiss, how they ruled from the top of the world with the aid of the gnordas. The old serpents came from the sea and were lords of these lower climes, governing jointly with the Wiss.
“The Wiss?” said the figlet wide-eyed. “But they live at the top of the world, on the ice.”
Lucidan inclined her head toward him. “Yes, there is ice there now. But before, the Wise Wiss knew many things now forgotten. They could fly through the air and, so the stories go, among the stars. They discovered how to move the cold off their lands, with the aid of great machines. Wiss-Ko then was balmy, and the icy Pole was removed to the sea a thousand kilometers from its shores. Wiss-Ko flourished.”
She grew quiet, thoughtful, and the figlet had to urge her on with, “What happened?”
Lucidan saddened. “Evil came. Then, as now, there was one jealous of power. A courtier, snubbed by the prince, stole the secret of the Wiss machinery and flew off into the stars. Calamity followed. The ice returned all in one day, like a pendulum swinging back. In a week most of the Wiss were dead. As if the natural forces of the Vortex had been pent up behind a dam and suddenly released, great winds circled the planet and most of the gnordas died. Within a dozen years the rest followed, until they and the Old Wiss were but a story told.”
“But there are still Wiss,” the figlet protested.
“Peasants,” she replied. “They who lived out in the weather in any event lived on, most of them. But the royalty, all those who understood the secret power, perished. The magic was lost. Thus we find ourselves at the mercy of a tyrant, with no protection. How the mighty have fallen.”
Lucidan seemed to return again into her private dream of Ralph’s lost glory. Her lips stopped moving.
Spacebread’s laughter brought the figlet back to the present, where Sonto was gathering his belongings. After bidding them all good night, the great black cat took his roll and bedded down just outside the cave with his rifle beside him. The fire burned low and warm.
Klimmit BarKloof dozed off into dreams of being painted with the sacred varnish and being proclaimed Warrior Second Class by the priest. He awakened briefly to see Spacebread gazing through the thin moss curtain at Sonto’s sleeping form. At least that was the direction she was looking. Her shoulders rose and fell with a sigh. Turning back to her bed roll, she noticed him watching her and smiled reassuringly. But her eyes wore a faraway, dreamlike glaze.
The figlet frowned, his tiny green brows knitting. He didn’t much care for the way she looked at Sonto. He clutched his slave papers closer around him and, putting her look out of mind, tried to sleep again.
[7]
Guests of Lord Dezorn
THE PLANTATION HOUSE of the naturalized Lord Dezorn of Blik-Twell lay pale and knobby in a broad blue-green valley, jutting from the foliage like a half-buried hipbone. A thin white wall separated the spires and domes of the manor house from the surrounding wilderness creating a protective dome of invisible magnetic force. The buildings shone brightly in the sunlight, white and sterile. A saucer with guards lay on the far side, behind the buildings.
Off behind the manor, Klimmit could see tiny figures working in the spice and comtosh fields and scattered behind them the workers’ quarters. In the distance some sort of edifice jutted half-finished from the jungle, a domed fort. The figlet buzzed along behind hedgerows and an occasional gnarled bush, keeping out of sight. Spacebread’s reassuring face had become a speck of white in the deep shadows of the forest nearly a half-kilometer behind him. Fearfully, he tucked his cryo-pistol closer to his body and squeezed between two shrubs, then sped across an open area to the protection of a hillock.
Spy, indeed! Just because he was the smallest and could fly. He hadn’t said a word when Spacebread had told him what she wanted of him, and he had obeyed without grumbling, but now he wished he had protested just a little. Perhaps she would have
come part of the way with him. He swallowed. He didn’t even know what the buckle looked like, or how the house was laid out or anything. Still, he must become a Warrior in the tradition of his fathers. If he had not been sold into slavery, he would have taken the initiation for Warriorhood six months ago. But it was harder without the priests and Uncle Torsok.
There were no guards posted beside the wooden gates sunk in the stone perimeter wall, but Spacebread had told him to be careful and not be spotted. And Lucidan, the peculiar old woman with her mother-of-pearl eyes staring past him, had shaken her broom-straw-haired head and said she could see nothing certain concerning their venture, nor the figlet’s mission. She only saw a huge snake creature and burning ice. And great danger, which went far beyond the matter of Spacebread’s belt buckle or even the local treachery of an evil regent. The figlet shuddered.
He was at the wall. Nothing at all had happened, and he was beginning to think he was good at this stealth business. If only the gnorlff did not have the energy dome, so that he could buzz right over the wall and be inside. (He shivered again at the thought of the figlet-eating yellow creature with three eyes, but shoved it quickly from his thoughts.) He found instead a narrow, jutting drainpipe and, taking a deep breath from all his pores, slipped inside.
It was wet and horrid, with the only light coming in from a short dot at the end. The walls rubbed the figlet’s green flesh. He hurried, pretending the scrapes and bruises were part of the Glomqoid ceremony bestowing Warriorhood. A pair of red eyes swam suddenly in from a side-slough; a ratlike squeal pierced the dripping silence; and before the figlet’s startled cry ended, a bizarre armored rodent stood reared on its hind legs, blue with ice, eye-sparks fading. The figlet felt a surge of bravery replace his fright as he slipped past the grisly statue. His courage had fired the cryo-pistol while his fear had squealed.
He emerged on the other side of the energy wall, muddy and bruised, but a little more daring. He watched from a gutter as a few people, guards and servants mostly, casually crossed the courtyard. When there were no more of them, he quickly soared across to the large rounded building Spacebread had told him was probably where Basemore and … the gnorlff were.
He slipped through a doorway and kept himself in the shadows at the tops of rooms, floating along sills, freezing still behind bottles or books whenever footsteps approached. He bumbled into the kitchen and a couple of bedrooms and a library. There were several rooms full of servants, one in which Ralphian technicians tested different apparatuses: lasers lasing, plasma torches crackling, ozone curling the air. But there was only one room that had guards posted. golden-armored guards with hard features. And Klimmit knew he had to get in.
It took several stealthy minutes for him to locate the air duct into the sealed room, and several more minutes to unscrew and pry up a corner of the filter grid. That allowed him to slip inside the cool square passage. It was only a little bigger than the drainage tube, but the difference was refreshing. He moved in the direction of a square of light, a grid that afforded him a view of the room beyond.
After a moment of looking with widening eyes at the scene that lay before him, the figlet realized he had stopped breathing, and resumed.
The gnorlff, fascinating in his bilious repulsiveness, squatted on a silk cushion and took long draughts from a multi-fixtured hookah. A thick red smoke exuded. And across a short table from Lord Dezorn sat Basemore himself, the regent of Bothwil in tourmaline-hued robes. His saurian face was dotted with brown warts. His orange spectacles glimmered, filtering out his deadly gaze. The figlet shrank back as if the basilisk could see him behind the filter, for the regent’s slitted eyes were darting, prying furnaces. Around the perimeter of the marble room there was a row of statues, in all stances, though most looked surprised, gesturing or running with hard gray limbs. They were soldiers and servants and various animals, all stone. And from behind a curtain came peculiar, ghostly music, which sounded hauntingly familiar.
Suddenly Klimmit’s attention was riveted to the gnorlff’s flabby face as its witch’s-cauldron voice bubbled, “And my chief engineer tells me the Blik-Twell fort is to become operational as soon as its dome is complete. Then we will have Northwil securely in our grasp.”
“Excellent,” Basemore muttered in his smooth tones. He sipped at tea. “It’s a curse we have to quarry all the stone from this one location.” Sip. “Or that I can’t bring in mining equipment. But, alas, the saucers were hard enough to slip past the Power.” Sip. “It is of no matter, though, now that we have the master lens found and restored, the plan will be complete, except for our trap for the cat.”
The figlet listened intently. What was that?
“All that remains is to make the Old Palace livable again. A polar ice cap is not the most hospitable climate, but at least Ralph’s Pole is more temperate than most.”
“Yes, my lord, but you should beware the Wiss-Koth. They are an unruly and rebellious folk and are not under your control. Ice-farmers at the top of the world. Remember, I have been on this planet longer than you. It was my influence that helped you become regent so that we would have no royal watchmen spying on our doings. Beware the free people of Wiss-Ko.” The gnorlff’s features fluttered.
Basemore smiled wryly and gestured with a clawed hand. “I do not cease to honor your name, Dezorn. And I thank you for your help at court. But do not forget, though you had all the charts and designs and the key to the forgotten Wiss language, I alone knew where to find the master lens, and I alone am its master. Before it, the ‘free’ people of Wiss-Ko are like dust on the wind.”
Basemore flipped open a case lying beside the teapot on the table, and a rainbow filled the room. Colors, those known and those never seen before, swirled in a fairy vortex around the room. The figlet stifled a gasp. The belt buckle, just as Spacebread had described it, lay gleaming in the box, only now it had intricate fixtures—gears and clamps, strange and tiny workings—inscribing its rim like metallic muscles around a crystal eye.
“No, I have nothing to fear from Wiss-Ko,” Basemore intoned. “And soon Spacebread will be in my power too, and none will stand to stop me.”
He lifted his enamel teacup high, a thin smile curling his face. “To the control of Ralph,” he toasted.
“And beyond,” the gnorlff clinked with his teacup aloft.
Without waiting for more, the figlet sped back along the dark air duct with his brain bustling in apprehension. Spacebread, in a trap? The words of the two dark lords rang in his ears dolefully. Spacebread’s buckle was the key to a plan to take over the entire planet! And this was to be accomplished at the north pole. Spacebread must be warned immediately.
He hurried to the end of the shaft where the grid corner was still bent out a little. Squeezing through, he sprinted along the ceiling shadows, around a doorway, and down a deserted hall. There were no guards to be seen. As a matter of fact, there were no servants, either. And the building was strangely quiet. He slowed down, peeked around a corner. The door to the courtyard was open, but there were muddy tracks, which had not been there before, leading in from the yard to an open doorway in a side corridor.
The figlet, suddenly suspicious, drew his gun and followed the tracks cautiously. A feeling of foreboding surrounded him. He turned into the dark room. From the shadows there were two pairs of boots extending, bound, and beside them sandaled Ralphian feet, also bound. Snow white and night black hairs were mixed in the muddy tracks. Spacebread! Sonto!
But before the figlet could turn to fire at the figures following him, a pale beam struck him in the back and he tumbled into blackness.
SPACEBREAD FELT MOTION, dim and groggy, a jogging of the black reality where she nestled. Slow thoughts sidled in stupid patterns. Her limbs were faraway and leaden. Using the strongest effort she had ever managed, she lifted her wobbling head to see, dimly, several bound bodies in a dim room. Klimmit, tiny green arms shackled. Lucidan, the ancient seer of invisible portents, sprawling. And Sonto, a blacker shape in
the dark chamber, head drooped across broad chest, hands behind. Sonto!
She tried to struggle, tried to at least kick out with her tied feet and upset the unseen being carrying her away from her companions, but she managed only to make her bearer stagger.
Something slammed her painfully against the wall and a voice like water hitting lava snapped, “Do that again and I’ll break your arm, cat.”
Lights fluttered past. She passed out again but awakened almost immediately. Bitter tea was being forced between her lips. She spat, gagged.
“There,” a malevolently familiar voice said.
She opened her eyes to see orange spectacles floating in a blotchy green face. Basemore withdrew the teacup. Horribly reminiscent music floated, disembodied, around the room.
What happened? What in the name of all the stars … the last thing she remembered was waiting in the forest for the figlet to return. He had just slipped into the plantation. Her memory swam in clouds of confusion. She had slipped her Foldover Bag off in preparation for storming the place when Klimmit got back … and there her memory ended abruptly. She was captive. Everything was failed. She had lost.
Basemore was talking aside to Dezorn, who hovered at his elbow. “Don’t you think they will make a fine addition to my collection? I will have some fun with this one—after all, we are old friends—and when the others awake, we can arrange a grouping.”
He looked sharply at Spacebread, who was trying to shake the mud from her mind.
“Welcome to my Lord Dezorn’s estate, Spacebread. We were discussing your fate. You were very accommodating to enter our trap so easily. Very predictable. We have sensors and remote stunner stations in the woods, you know. We got all of you but that absurd three-legged beast of yours. We will hunt it down in no time and feed it to my Guard.
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