Still holding on to his computer, Jeremy slid up against a wall, then felt the peculiar sensation of being absorbed into it. The stone was hot and gooey, like a marshmallow left too long in a campfire. He struggled to get away.
“Linda!” he screamed. “What's happening?"
Her answer had a peculiar effect on him. On the one hand, it was good news, because he didn't like the castle. On the other, in a very literal sense he didn't know where he'd be without it.
What Linda had shouted back was: “The castle's disappearing!"
Drawing Room, Family Residence
He entered a spacious room full of stately furniture. Ancient tapestries draped the walls, hanging alongside antique weapons, shields, coats of arms, and suchlike. Glass-fronted cabinets stood here and about, displaying glassware and other historical artifacts. It was a quiet, comfortable room with many points of interest, among which was a curious device lying on a table to one side. He went directly to it.
In the main, the thing consisted of glass spheres, copper tubes, brass coils, and other primitive-looking, quasi-electronic components. On the front of the device was a simple instrument panel with a small ground-glass viewing screen.
He adjusted a few controls and flipped a switch. Sparks of violet and blue began to arc within the glass spheres. The device emitted a soft hum.
He made further adjustments, then fetched a chair and seated himself.
Executing a few hand passes, he began chanting in a low monotone.
The hum grew louder, but the glass remained blank.
“Damn it,” he muttered. “Not this thing, too."
Far-off thunder turned his head. A slight tremor shook the walls.
“I wonder if there's going to be time,” he mused.
He went back to chanting. Suddenly a great blue spark snapped between two neighboring components.
He jumped up and fanned away the smoke, then checked the works of the device for small fires. Finding none, he fiddled with the controls.
He stepped back a few paces, raised his arms, and extended them forward, his index fingers pointing.
“Machine! I bid thee ... work, goddammit!"
The screen came to life, displaying the images of three strange individuals seated behind a long desk. Attired in black turtlenecks and gray jackets, the three shared a family resemblance, though each had his individual aspects. All had dark, close-cropped hair. The one in the middle wore thick eyeglasses in a heavy black frame. The eyes of the individual on the right were pale. His colleague on the opposite side had a large mole on his left cheek.
Glasses spoke first: “This is indeed a pleasure, Lord Incarnadine. We extend our warmest welcome."
Incarnadine exhaled and took his seat. “Your hospitality is inappropriate, for what you see before you is but an image. For now, I send my simulacrum. Pray to whatever deities you hold in awe that I do not find it necessary to visit you in person."
Glasses was mildly amused. “Belligerent as always. You will never change, Incarnadine."
“I will brook no impertinence from you. Moreover, you will address me as ‘Your Serene and Transcendental Majesty.’”
All three laughed. Mole said, “Oh, by all means, Your Serene and ... I beg your pardon. What was the rest of it?"
“A simple ‘Majesty’ will do now and then, mixed up with a few ‘sirs.’ Let's skip it and get to business.” Incarnadine leaned forward, his eyes steely, glints of fire in them. When next he spoke, his voice rattled the glass cabinets.
“What have you done with my sister?"
Glasses blinked his eyes. “Dear me. You seem quite upset. But instead of shouting at the top of your lungs, wouldn't it be vastly better instead to—?"
“Answer the question! I know she is with you and that she is in great distress. You will release her to me this instant."
Pale-Eyes spoke, a sneer on his thin gray lips. “It is ironic that you of all people should inquire after your sister's welfare—you who banished her, consigned her to oblivion."
“It is monstrous that you, her torturers, speak to me of irony. Release her, I say, or suffer the consequences."
Mole sniffed indignantly. “Threats. Always threats. Your line breeds true, Majestic One. For thousands of years, your family has done nothing but bluster, bully, and rattle the castle armory. We have done nothing to merit such treatment. We have always wanted peace, cooperation, and mutual understanding."
Incarnadine snorted. “I won't bother to debate with you. The issue this time is very clear. You have abducted my sister—"
“We offered asylum!"
“— and are holding her against her will. If you do not release her, you will suffer consequences dire in the extreme. Moreover, you will also cease and desist from certain supernatural techniques which you have either extorted from my sister or gained by bargaining with her in bad faith. Furthermore—"
“Really,” Glasses protested.
“Furthermore, you will disobey this latter command at the peril of losing your own lives, if not of killing every living being in your universe."
“How so?” Pale-Eyes asked.
“Surely you have guessed by now. Have not your natural philosophers detected anomalous stresses in the interstitial subspace? Do they not realize what these portend?"
“It is mere conjecture."
“Not so. You are playing with forces far beyond your control or comprehension."
Mole shook his head. “We have conducted a few experiments for defense purposes."
“You are deliberately trying to destabilize Castle Perilous, and you know it. You also know, since you have agents here who can tell you, that your efforts have been successful to a degree."
Mole waved a bony hand in protest. “We have no agents, as you put it, at work in your residence, or anywhere, for that matter. Really, you must not impute to us your own—"
“Cut the crap!” Incarnadine said. “Listen to me. Continue to do what you're doing, continue to draw power from the etherium, and you will doom the universe."
“Absurd exaggeration,” Mole scoffed.
“Paranoid fantasies,” Glasses said.
“Fear-mongering,” was Pales-Eyes’ contribution.
Incarnadine sat back. “All right, enough. I will say this once. Attend me."
Mole guffawed. “By all means, proceed."
“If you do not release my sister and desist in these so-called experiments, you will leave me no choice. Listen very carefully to what I am about to describe. If you do not accede to my wishes, I will dispatch to your world a force the like of which you have never imagined. This force, this phenomenon, will kill every living thing in your world. All will perish. There will be no escape. Do you understand me?"
The three silently exchanged glances.
“Well, do you?"
Glasses cleared his throat. “I must say, your threats have reached a new level of malevolence. To blackmail us with talk of genocide—"
“You leave me no choice. If I stay my hand, I doom not only my universe but all the universes."
“Surely these dire predictions of yours have at least a chance of being mistaken."
“I have said what I have said. Heed my words."
Glasses stiffened. “We will not be intimidated! This is too much. We will defend ourselves with all the might at our disposal. Our response to any attack will be massive retaliation! We will not let you—"
The screen suddenly went to snow, then to black. Multiple-colored lines appeared, a test pattern of some sort, which remained a brief moment.
Then a new face appeared. A face only, in close-up. Well proportioned, broad-browed, and photogenic, it gave the impression, somehow, of being artificial, as though rendered by a journeyman artist with no sense of character.
“Inky sweetheart! Listen, forgive my butting in, but things were getting a little out of hand. I thought it wouldn't hurt to try a different tack entirely."
Incarnadine allowed a brief smile. “How kin
d of you. What's with this new incarnation? Earth dialect, smarmy patter—you sound like a cross between a Hollywood agent and a used-computer salesman."
“You're being hostile again, Inky baby. Just trying out a new policy, a new way of dealing with difficult matters. In these perilous times, we simply have to do all we can to oil the diplomatic machinery. Right, Ink?"
“Don't even think of calling me that. As for this new facade, forget it. At least the Central Committee, or whatever it's called, has a certain decorum. This is revolting."
The face looked hurt. “Inky! That was below the belt."
Incarnadine gave a sardonic grunt. “You have no belt."
“Now look, Inky, I think it'd be better for all concerned if we just took time to simmer down, get in touch with our emotions, and take stock. All this talk about attacking people and blowing things up and generally declaring war on the whole universe and its environs—well, frankly I'm shocked. How did it get this far, Inky? What a shame, what a colossal shame. And all because both sides can't quite—"
“Be quiet."
“Please, let me finish! All this tension has really only one cause. Mutual distrust! That's it in a clamshell, Inky. Really, I know what I'm talking about. In such a charged atmosphere as this, a productive dialogue is all but impossible. Both sides have to change in order for—"
“Silence!"
The face on the screen stopped moving its lips, its blue eyes wide and blank.
Incarnadine stood. “I don't know what ploy, what game you're playing—good cop/bad cop, or what. It won't work. It's too far gone for that! I meant what I said. Obey or die. It's as simple as that. You know me, you know my power. Take warning or be resigned to your doom."
The face took animation once more. “Well, go ahead and be that way, Inky. It's all the same to me. You can't scare us. We have your silly cow of a sister, and after we get done with her, we'll start on you. You can't stop us—human scum! Shit-eating bastard human filth! We'll kill all of you, every last—"
The screen went blank, became a rectangle of ground glass once again.
He lowered his head and heaved a great sigh.
Rising, he turned off the device. The humming stopped and the sparks faded.
A stronger tremor shook the room. He looked off, sensing its magnitude. Then his eyes turned inward.
At length he came out of his reverie and turned toward the door, walking briskly.
He muttered, “Now I gotta put my paycheck where my oral cavity gapes—as it were."
Plains
Gene hacked and slashed, then hacked again.
His hrunt opponent staggered back, throat agape and oozing. Gene followed up with a thrust to the diaphragm, driving his sword deep into tough abdominal muscle. The hrunt doubled up and fell.
Gene let the hrunt slide off his sword, then swung round to ward off a weak lunge from a wounded hruntan infantryman who wouldn't go down. Gene skewered the creature, leaving little room for refusal.
Gene looked around and realized that the battle was over, and that the yalim had won the day, fighting under his personal military command. Hrunt bodies carpeted the battlefield.
He sheathed his sword, fetched his voort, mounted, and shouted the command for recall.
As the troops fell into ranks, thoughts of the castle drifted back. He hadn't thought about home in a long while. How long had he been here? Four, five months? And in that time he had gone from yalim prisoner to First Husband and Captain of the Royal Cohorts.
He wondered what was going on back at Perilous. Did it still exist? He had kept his eyes open for any sign of the portal, but it was like hoping to get hit by the same raindrop twice. The portal could appear anywhere on this world, or it might never appear again.
Whatever was going on back there, it must have been bad, or Sheila and Linda would have made some attempt to find him. Maybe they had tried, and failed. There was another possibility, one he was loath to consider: they might have perished in some general cataclysm that he, by sheerest happenstance, had managed to escape.
The cohorts had mustered, and now a great cheer rose up from them.
Gene drew his sword and raised it above his head. The voort under him reared up, braying.
The cohorts cheered louder, broke ranks, and gathered round him. They took him from his mount and bore him on their shoulders back to the Queen's field tent.
It was night, the lamps flickering in the soft breeze that blew through the tent. Outside, campfires crackled, animals grunted, and men laughed, happy and drunk, flushed with victory.
“You have conquered, my husband."
“Yep. Peel me a grape, will you?"
“Is that what this fruit is called in your land?"
“Just kidding. Are you cold? Do you want to put some clothes on?"
“No. I will never wear clothes again, my husband, when we are alone together."
“Hey, that's fine with me. Look, I've got big plans. Now that the hrunt are cleared out of the lowlands, we—"
“You will continue your campaign into the southern desert?"
“Huh? No, not really. I think we should head west. As far as we know, no hrunt live there. But that's where Annau is."
“Annau?"
“Yeah, the city of Annau."
Vaya sat up and regarded him, her dark eyes narrowed. “Why do you speak of an abode of the Old Gods? It is bad luck to do so."
“Uh-huh. Well, look. Things are going to change around here. I realize that taboos are hard to overcome, but it simply has to be done if your people are going to have any future."
She wrinkled her brow. “Future?"
“Sure. Do you want your people living in tents and scraping a living off this wasteland forever? You told me that every year the hunting is harder. Every year the tribe's population shrinks a little. It's a losing fight. That's what happened to the Umoi when they tried to go the Whole Earth Catalog route. It was a dead end, and now they're extinct."
She shook her head. “You speak of many strange things. Forbidden things. You make me afraid, my husband."
“Not to worry. Rub me right there. Yeah, that's it."
Her hands were soft. “But you are a great warrior."
“You won't get an argument from me."
“You have killed more hrunt than all of my husbands combined. You have killed more than any yalim has ever killed."
“Just applied some modern military tactics, is all."
“One day you will kill all the hrunt and they will never again raid our camps or steal our food."
“Right. Well, look, I'm no Stalin. I'm not out to exterminate the kulaks, or do anything like that. The hrunt...” Gene propped himself up on one elbow. “Look, there's something you have to know about the hrunt. I've been researching this with Zond. And Zond says—"
“Is that the name of the spirit you converse with?"
“Uh, yeah. You see, the Umoi—the Old Gods—created both yalim and hrunt, but for different purposes. The hrunt were the field niggers, and the yalim were the ... never mind. They were both servant classes, but the hrunt were created stupid so they wouldn't mind working in deep mines or doing other dangerous stuff. But the real thing you should know is, hrunt are really just yalim who've been genetically altered a little bit."
Vaya lay down, paralleling Gene, her long golden body radiant in the lamplight.
“Speak more of this to me, my husband."
“Uh, yeah. Um ... well, what that means is, a hrunt is really a yalim except for a few extra genes spliced into his DNA. They turn him ugly and change his body chemistry a little bit, but essentially he's human. The thing is, once we get back into the cities, it won't be any problem to snip those pesky genes out. We'd have to round up all the hrunt women, of course, and do some cell surgery....” Gene considered it. “Actually I guess the simplest solution would be sterilization, though that does have a totalitarian ring to it. But morally speaking, since hrunt are really just handicapped humans—” He trailed off
into deep thought.
Presently he sat up. “Hey, guess what. Things aren't simple even in fantasyland."
“Things are never simple, my husband. It is not the way of the world."
“Or the universe. Or universes."
“You are a strange one, my husband. You came here speaking a strange tongue, wearing strange clothes, riding a chariot of the Old Gods. Yet you are a man. Are you a god as well?"
Gene raked his eye up and down Vaya's exquisite body. “No. Just the best swordsman this side of Castle Perilous. And the luckiest guy in several worlds, I might add."
She held out her arms. “Come to me, husband and lover."
“Oy."
Island
Their house, sheltered by hill palms, had a beautiful view of the sea. A screened veranda jutted out to one side, and Sheila would sit there at all hours weaving baskets, mats, and other housewares. She liked watching waves break against the rocks and huge seabirds wheel in the sky.
The birds weren't gulls; at least they didn't look like sea gulls. They were eagle size but fatter, and they fished the waters of the lagoon. It was thrilling and a little frightening to watch them stoop, dive, and pluck a struggling fish out of the water, clutching their prey in great silver talons.
The weather was always beautiful. It rained sometimes at night, very softly, very soothingly on the thatched roof of their house. Trent told her that a monsoon season would come eventually, as this was standard procedure for tropical climes. But, then again, he didn't know this world. Maybe the weather stayed fair all year long. Sheila hoped so.
After Trent finished the house, he spent his days building a raft. There was a reason for this.
The volcano had begun smoking about two months after their arrival. It had trailed wisps of white vapor for a week, then began putting up a steady column of dark smoke along with an occasional plume of ash. Every once in a while it would shoot out boulders the size of automobiles. Sheila watched them splash into the sea. Their island was in no danger at the moment, but the volcano was too close for comfort. Trent said that the presence of birds meant there had to be mainland near, or at least a bigger island, and they would have to reach it to be really safe.
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