Spacebread turned to look at Sonto. The wind whipped at his fur, and he regarded her through squinted eyes.
“We made it,” she said, and touched his shoulder. I just hope the figlet makes it, too.”
“He will,” Sonto said. “He’s too sly a little fellow. And we will make it all the way together.”
His smile suddenly comforted Spacebread. She was beaten and bruised and starved, but they had both come through their time of hardship, and Sonto’s smile was warm. She was not a loser now, whatever Basemore thought.
To the north, ever to the north, they flew, Ten-Times-Two and his band, like gray moonlets around the mammoth gnorda, for they traveled by magnetic propulsion as well as wings, and they could move as fast as he.
There was little rest, though Spacebread drifted off into a strange slumber, arms aching from holding on. At least for a while it seemed dreamlike, for the surface of the globe beneath curved gently, dazzling white beds of clouds raced in corkscrew patterns above misty greenness, and around them the blue skies of Ralph purpled and faded to infinite black, dusted with piercing stars. It seemed to Spacebread to be something of what Lucidan saw at times in the coal cellar cosmos behind her eyes, where the stars of the future and the past twinkled together.
Or perhaps it was the thin, cold air. At any rate, her reverie was interrupted by chirping mathematical signals. Ten-Times-Two called.
“Lady Spacebread.”
She responded dreamily.
“I have just heard from a scout beneath us, one of my band long sent ahead. He broadcasts that there is an alert at the new fort near the last shores of Northwil, at Sar-Kath. Many armed soldiers and machines.”
Shaking the dreams like broken mirror pieces from her mind, Spacebread shouted the news to Sonto.
He replied, “They must have seen our direction, or assumed we followed the regent. We must make it to Sar-Kath! I have agents there who can reach Gallwort.”
She nodded stiffly against the gale. They would have to descend again into danger. It was a race with the soldiers. And what if they did make it and managed eventually to catch up with Basemore? She put it out of her mind and pressed her fur deeper between the gnorda’s spines.
IT SEEMED ONLY a short time until the sky paled again and they were sweeping toward a distant finger of green jutting into a blue ocean.
Sonto pointed at a fleck of civilization on its tip. “Sar-Kath,” he shouted over the roar. “We must convince Thyfax to interrupt his stroll.”
But the beast was dipping, dipping inevitably, and it became clear that Thyfax was heading for the peninsula in any case. He glanced at them around his treelike neck.
“YES, I HEARD YOU, GHRAM CALLED SONTO. MY EARS ARE NO LONGER FILLED WITH EARTH. BUT WE MUST DOWN REGARDLESS. THESE OLD BONES WERE NOT NEW A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. I MUST REST AT THIS SAR-KATH PLACE. REST!”
It turned again to face the nearing ground. Its wings stretched out to their full length, and the huge weight glided through the clouds, a streak. Forests became distinct, then trees. They zoomed over blurs of villages, wisps of roads. A great battlement flashed by, and hot beams licked out to catch them, too slow and weak. Spacebread looked back to see the caterpillar of an armored column creeping methodically from the fort. She saw light cannon and a brigade of Basemore’s troops.
In a moment they were nearing the spires and walls of Sar-Kath; the gnorda’s wings flapped out and fought to brake their speed. The bulk of the beast bucked and swung through the air currents, and its passengers did likewise. The air dropped from a howl to a whistle to a breeze. The immense wings beat rhythmically and then, with creaking joints, folded to tuck up under Thyfax’s abdomen.
Their fingers felt permanently gripped to Thyfax, but somehow they pried themselves off the beast’s back and slid down. They stood in a colorful cobbled square littered with overturned fruit carts and scattered possessions. The square had been recently and hastily evacuated.
Thyfax groaned. “OOOHHH, MY BACK.” It folded elephantine legs and settled on the pavement. “AAAAHHH. REST.” Then it noticed various fearful eyes peeping from windows and cubbies about the area. “COME OUT, COURAGEOUS RALPHIANS! I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY. IS YOUR MEMORY SO SHORT? I AM A GNORDA, AND A PRINCE. I WON’T BURN YOUR FLIMSY SHACKS!”
While the three tried to shake life back into their cold, locked joints, Thyfax drained the fountain that was the center of the yard, gulping like a bilge pump. The butterflies settled peacefully along its back.
Slowly, Ralphians crept out of shadows and hiding places to confront this mountain of winged flesh that had erased their peaceful market. Spacebread found a respectable cape and new boots in her bag, and began explaining about the gnorda, herself, and the butterflies to any Ralphians venturesome enough to come close. As soon as he limbered up, Sonto kissed Spacebread on her whiskers for good luck and hurried off to find his agent. Lucidan leaned against Thy fax’s flank, suddenly an old woman drained of strength. Even her eyes seemed to dim.
It took some convincing, but after a generous (and curious) peddler gave Spacebread some fruit and bread and she gained some strength, most of the Ralphians believed her story.
“… I knew the regent years ago,” she said, “and he was a thief then. Now he has gone mad with hunger for power, and your king has unwittingly given it to him. VolVarnix is a tyrant, and the only reason you have not seen it is that you have not gotten in his way before. Have none of you asked why North-wil needs a fort so close to Sar-Kath when you are at peace with your neighbors?”
That raised a murmur among the younger Ralphians.
“But surely he will not harm his people,” ventured an old cobbler.
She shook her head. “He will do anything to stop us. A column of soldiers is headed here now. They will destroy Sar-Kath to destroy me.”
The people rumbled arguments among themselves.
The gnorda’s sigh rustled their hair. “THE CAT TELLS THE TRUTH. EVERYWHERE THE LITTLE ARMORED ANTS FIRE THEIR WEAPONS AT ME.”
“The Vortex is in danger,” added Lucidan in native Ralphian, her voice weary.
“The Vortex? In danger? Ridiculous!” a priest scoffed.
As the debate raged, Sonto, a spotted cat, and a Ralphian shoved their way to Spacebread.
“It is done,” Sonto said, pushing his arms into a fresh robe. “The fastest boat in Sar-Kath is launched to King’slsle. Meet Rondo and Gloyd. I’ve told them of you and your quest. They want to come with us across the sea to Wiss-Ko. Do you think the gnorda can handle them, too?”
Thyfax shuddered. “TOO? ALAS, GHRAM, MY WINGS ARE LIKE WATER. I HAVE FLOWN TOO FAR TOO FAST TOO SOON. MY KNEES TREMBLE TO LIFT MY OWN WEIGHT. I WILL BE CARRYING NO ONE TO THE OLD WISS LAND TODAY …”
Even the gnorda’s booming voice cut short by the roar that sliced the air over them. A moment of quiet, then the ground rocked and a white flash flowered behind rows of houses.
“A light-shell!” Sonto shouted above the general lament of the crowd. “They mean to destroy us and Sar-Kath with us!”
“GO!” Thyfax reared, grimacing with pain, to his feet. “I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE LIVED LONGER. BUT WE CANNOT CHOOSE OUR CIRCUMSTANCES. I WILL GIVE THEM CAUSE TO LINGER HERE WHILE YOU ESCAPE.”
The iron butterflies took to the air in alarm.
Sonto pulled at Spacebread’s arm. “There are boats, if we hurry.”
She shook him loose and looked up at the gnorda. Another shell screamed over the city and exploded, nearer this time.
“Follow us, Thyfax. Swim. You are the last of a brave race. No one can ask you to die for this new world when its people will not even fight.”
Thyfax laughed, deep honking barks. “WHAT IS ONE GNORDA ALONE? MY RACE, OF WHOM I AM THE LAST, SHOULD NOT FLICKER OUT BENEATH THE WINDS OF OLD AGE AND COMFORT. GNORDAS WERE THE LORDS ONCE. I WOULD DOOM THEIR HONOR, FORGOTTEN THOUGH IT IS, IF I SLUNK AWAY FROM A FOE. I WILL TEACH THEM WHAT A GNORDA IS. THE RACE COULD NOT END BETTER.”
Without waiting for reply, he m
ounted heavily into the air, his leather sails lifting him over the housetops. He roared a challenge and was gone.
Panic ensued. Light-shells were flashing all over the city, people ran like rats on a burning ship. Sonto’s dark hand pulled Spacebread and Lucidian through the surging, packed jams of people. The butterflies followed like a metallic halo around her head. She could see Rondo and Gloyd bouncing ahead of Sonto.
The next quarter-hour was a shapeless nightmare of pushing and pulling, of buildings erupting around them, and screams from everywhere. Then there was a blinding flash …
… she regained consciousness to find herself in a boat and Sonto stroking her head. It ached, but nothing serious. Gloyd had been killed in the explosion. The rest had survived. She held onto Sonto’s arm and pulled herself up.
They rode at high speed, crashing through waves as they headed to the blue north horizon. Ten-Times-Two and his horde sped behind. A few others, king’s agents too, manned the small launch they rode, looking grim. Lucidan, lying like a bundle of rags, faced aft.
Behind them, the sky over Sar-Kath was blood red. The flashes had slowed down and now were infrequent. In the hellish glow behind the city, they could occasionally see a shape, a serpentine shape darker than the smoke, dipping and swooping through the flames.
“He’s holding them,” she said. “They would have already been to the harbor and after us.” But surely even the gnorda’s great strength would fall before the army in time. She assumed he would die.
Sonto squeezed her shoulder gently.
Spacebread let her free hand explore the empty brass setting on her belt. So much for a belt buckle. Jolita the ghorse, gone. Prince Thyfax, last of the gnordas, gone. Her promise to the Power of Ralph, gone. And yet it was not done.
[9]
Snow and Fear
THE SUN HAD SET an hour before. The lee horizon still showed faint yellow traces of it, while behind them the vestiges of burning Sar-Kath bloodied the darkness. Spray covered the ship’s dome with a thousand blurred droplets, and Spacebread gazed pensively through them. Sonto nestled against her dirt-grayed shoulder, purring in sleep. Her hand absently stroked his black ears.
After a while he woke, stretched, and rubbed his eyes. “It feels good not to have a day of heaving blocks of stone around to look forward to, doesn’t it?” he said.
She smiled wanly at him, her eyes not leaving their course.
He rubbed her tensed neck. “Why don’t you sleep? You deserve it. I’ve never seen anyone fight as bravely. Is it the figlet?”
She relaxed a bit, her shoulders sagging into his grip. “Yes. He and more. I wonder about fate a bit. I thought I was foiling fate when I bought him out from under the gnorlff. But it seems I was only delaying it. Surely such a glutton as Dezorn would have …”
“Perhaps not,” Sonto tried to rally her. “Klimmit wanted above all things to prove himself a Warrior. Perhaps he has escaped.”
Spacebread continued, as if thinking to herself, “And I have always tried to live with a certain code of honor. It has no certain boundaries, but I know it like my face. It’s part of me, like my soul. Now I find that honor has me breaking my oath and interfering in the fate of a whole planet.”
Sonto tried again. “Klimmit considers himself your slave and followed you of his own will. As for the other, Gallwort will know of the regent’s treachery in three days, as soon as the boat we sent gets in radio range. And then he will come with his entire garrison. Basemore, the false regent, will be dealt with, and you shall have your buckle back. I would have discovered the truth about the regent without you, and things would have taken this course. You have not broken your oath.”
She smiled, this time genuinely. “Perhaps you are right. Still, I fear for the figlet. It doesn’t matter that he thinks himself my slave. We all think ourselves slaves. You, to Gallwort. I, to my honor. He knew he was free, but came to be on an ‘adventure’ with me and win his selfhood back from slavery. I suppose I could have freed myself from my own imaginary obligations if I had wanted to.”
Son to drew her close. “But then I would not have learned to love you for your honor, as well as your beauty.”
He kissed her softly. Her eyes closed.
She smiled, a smile with life in it. “You have done a rare thing, Son to Ghram. There are worlds where I would not allow you to do such a thing in public. Dims my image.”
Sonto grinned. “Then I am glad we are on Ralph.”
The night grew thicker around them, and fog shrouded the stars. In another hour they were well inside the Bay of Krath. Spacebread slept, gently rocked by the motion of the boat. When she awakened, the boat was bumping against wooden docks, and lanterns wiggled their reflections in the water.
They had radioed ahead, and a party was on the docks to help them from the craft. Spacebread lifted Lucidan to the wharf herself. The old woman was near ill with exhaustion. Turning, Spacebread spied Ten-Times-Two and the other butterflies clustered on a piling. Donning the radio helmet again, she formulated an equation of gratitude for their crucial help.
“It was our privilege,” Ten-Times-Two replied.
She asked if he could take his band to the north, to watch in case anything threatened from that direction.
He agreed, but added, “I hope you will help us attack the imposter Basemore soon. There is something upsetting the magnetic flow to a horrible degree, and we feel ill.”
“Gallwort will sail to help us soon. Is there anything further I can do to help?”
“Only hurry,” Ten-Times-Two responded in an oddly disjointed voice, then fluttered off with his tribe over the rooftops.
Sonto spoke to the men in somber tones, then they led them up carved stone steps and through narrow, lighted streets. Their breath frosted before them, and Spacebread had to fold her cape around Lucidan. They were only a few hundred kilometers from the North Pole; and though Ralph’s Pole was not as bitter cold as the Pole on some planets, the nip was sharp in the air. Their guides were, like Rondo, shorter and stockier than the southern Ralphians. They were Wiss, of an ancient stock.
Fortunately for Spacebread’s wearying legs, their destination, a ramshackle inn and fish market, was close by. Inside was warmth, the permeating scent of fish and ale. It was filled also with Wiss, and Sonto introduced her to the manager as soon as they had found a place of rest for Lucidan.
“Colden Xarc. Spacebread the Wondercat. Colden is an old friend, and a friend of Gallwort’s.”
Colden, a thick, grizzled blue Wiss with an abalone ornament in the place of one eye clapped her on the shoulder. “Pleased, pleased to meet a friend of Sonto Ghram. Will you have some smoked fish and chowder with us?”
Although Spacebread’s rough tongue writhed in anticipation at the thought, she shook her head. “In a moment. Have you a room where I could freshen up?”
“Of course! Without delay!” He pointed her to an empty bedchamber.
In her absence, between gulps of chowder and ale, Sonto explained their escape and present mission.
“Kidnapped? Treachery!” Colden wheezed. “Sar-Kath destroyed! A gnorda?”
The tavern noise abated as the tale unfolded. Silence, shroud-like, replaced it when Sonto told them they suspected the false regent and his cohorts were now in Wiss-Ko, preparing some treason.
Just then Spacebread emerged. She was resplendent in a yellow-gold cape, tall brown boots and tan tunic. Her fur was as clean as snow and her sword-hilt glistened.
“I take it you have told our tale?” she said, sitting beside Sonto.
Colden nodded. “I can scarce believe it.”
She bit ravenously into a piece of fish and pushed her ale across to touch Lucidan’s hand. “Drink, mother, and tell them what the truth is.”
The whispers circuited the room when she lifted her face to quaff, whispers of star-sight, for the Wiss were much more cognizant of such matters than their southerly cousins.
“Sonto tells rightly,” she said, her trembling hand
wiping the foam from her lips. “Things are bad in Bothwil. My village was destroyed by one of the regent’s off world craft. Many are slaves to build for the army. And the last, long-sleeping gnorda is gone. Now fire comes to the ice of Wiss-Ko.”
Her eyes gazed into her private chasm for a moment, then she lifted the cup again.
“Have you seen anything unusual?” said Spacebread between bites.
“No. Nothing,” answered Colden Xarc.
She flicked a bone from between her teeth with her tongue. Her yellow eyes examined the crowd. “Any of you. Have you seen an airship passing, or suspicious southerners? Smoke? Sounds? Shadows?”
Numerous blue heads shook.
“Naught but the Gray Watcher,” one added.
Spacebread’s eyes lanced into Colden. “What does he mean?”
“Aye, the Watcher,” responded the fishmonger. “Tis nothing. Just a strange cowled priest we have seen on the cliffs above the fleet of a morning. He has been there at dawn for nigh onto a week scanning the south sea. No one has been able to speak to him. Some of the women tried. He fled in a strange manner and disappeared in the rocks.”
Spacebread knitted her brows and looked at Sonto quizzically. She could not guess if this Gray Watcher was connected with Basemore, but if he gazed south … “Perhaps we should be on hand at dawn tomorrow,” she said to Sonto.
Colden handed her a steaming bowl of chowder with cheese floating on top. “Come, lass, eat your fill. You’ll have not eaten well the last few weeks.”
She needed no encouragement and fell on the delicious stuff with zeal.
Some of the banter returned to the tavern. Colden grinned broadly at her and said, “I trust your words, but still, I cannot believe anyone would dare to invade the land of the free people of Wiss-Ko.”
Spacebread licked her lips and looked up. “Basemore the Basilisk has no idea what a ‘free people’ are. The concept is alien to him.”
“Well, he’ll do well to learn a little of our history before he trifles with our frosty soil,” Colden sneered. “Our people, when our blood was pure four thousand years ago, ruled this land wisely, in partnership with the gnordas of the south. There were great palaces everywhere. We were far ahead of the rest of the galaxy. And we were free. We have never been invaded since. The Old Palace of the Wiss still stands north of here, at the Pole. It is magnificent, though we hardly venture there. Of course, it was not at the Pole then. The Pole was further west. That was when our forefathers controlled the weather and the Poles and the planet’s molten core. No one knows how, now. That art was lost a thousand years ago, when the old people’s clockwork was sabotaged, and the Poles shifted. It was a time when we plied our wares throughout the galaxy.”
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