The Lion Returns

by John Dalmas

  Their father had awed them. He too was psychically talented, and to have so awesome a companion as Vulkan... Also they'd felt his surge of anger at Rillor, even if they hadn't understood it. Such power! And at the same time control. Ohns said their father should be king somewhere, or even emperor, and Dohns agreed unreservedly.

  Cyncaidh too had impressed them. His talent and integrity were obvious, and he'd invited them into his family. Dohns was tempted to accept the offer. Ohns was not, though he wasn't ready to dismiss it. He would, he said, rather follow their father, if he'd have him.

  * * *

  It was not the first time Vulkan had roamed the streets of Duinarog invisibly, but it was the first in many years. He followed the scent of Rillor's horse to the embassy, which he then circled, and picked up the horse's trail again. It led southeastward, ending on the riverfront, at a livery stable.

  From there, Vulkan followed Rillor's scent to the dock where the man had set out in a rental boat. His strategy was obvious.

  To inform Cyncaidh would probably result in the man's capture, but Vulkan decided not to. At most it would provide revenge. And meanwhile ... Vulkan couldn't complete the thought. The vector spray was too unclear. But he trusted his bodhisattva intuition in all things, even recognizing that the results might not be what he hoped.

  20 Old News, Bad News

  Cyncaidh had had a long night. He'd ridden with the chief inspector to the Sisterhood's embassy, told the ambassador of the evening's events, and shown her the letter from the dynast. The letter had been the key to her cooperation. She'd recognized the handwriting—that of the dynast's deputy, a Sister named Omara. Whom, she insisted, would never involve herself in assassination.

  Though he didn't voice it, Cyncaidh was skeptical. Given what had happened to Varia at the Cloister, it seemed to him that Sarkia would hardly have an ethical deputy. Macurdy, however, would support the ambassador's claim when he heard of it after breakfast.

  After seeing the letter, the ambassador had her guardsmen search the embassy for Rillor. When they didn't find him, her master at arms had brought the dress uniform Rillor had worn. The ambassador had given it to the Chief Inspector, who, back in his office, cut the pockets out. In the trouser pockets he found remnants of powder. It would be tested on rodents, but neither he nor Cyncaidh doubted what the result would be.

  * * *

  At breakfast, Cyncaidh summarized for Macurdy and the twins what he'd learned the night before. Rillor's flight, before he could have heard of the poisonings, was damning in itself. They'd finished eating, and were sipping hot sassafras tea with honey, when Talrie entered, to inform his lordship that Cadet Corleigh had arrived. The young man was waiting in the first-floor parlor. Cyncaidh then told the twins the cadet was to give them a tour of the imperial palace. They realized they were being dismissed. Perhaps, they thought, their elders wanted to discuss Sarkia's proposal further. They'd have preferred to stay and listen, but a tour of the palace sounded better than waiting in their room.

  Afterward, Cyncaidh and Varia led Macurdy to the garden. Obviously they wanted to talk with him privately, and he wondered if Varia had had second thoughts about Sarkia's proposal. In spite of himself, the thought quickened his pulse.

  In the garden, three large wicker chairs had been arranged in a semicircle. They'd hardly seated themselves when Talrie arrived, leading Vulkan, who lay down facing the others. Then Talrie left.

  Cyncaidh looked at Macurdy. "Varia and I," he said, "have been wondering why you returned."

  What he wanted to know was what brought Macurdy back from Farside, but Macurdy misunderstood. "A dream," he answered.

  "A dream?"

  "A dream I had in Wolf Springs."

  "And where is Wolf Springs?"

  "It's the village at the Ozian Gate. What the Ozians call the Wizard Gate."

  Cyncaidh frowned. This wasn't what he'd had in mind.

  "I'd arrived back through the gate in Three-Month," Macurdy continued, "and spent a while there with Arbel, my old teacher in healing. Ordinarily I don't think about healing. I'll see a need, but it doesn't often occur to me that, hey! I can do something about that. And Arbel'd decided I wasn't intended to be a healer.

  "Still, I find myself wanting to improve my healing skills. Ever since a guy stabbed Melody nearly to death on our wedding night, leaving me to do what I could for her. Incidentally, it was Omara who saved her life."

  Cyncaidh nodded soberly. Some of the story was part of the Macurdy legend.

  "What about the dream?" Varia asked.

  "I'd planned to tell you about that, then with all the stuff that happened last night, I didn't get around to it. After I got back from Farside, I spent a few weeks with Arbel at Wolf Springs, getting more lessons and experience in healing, while I waited for Vulkan to show up. Vulkan and I got to know one another before I went back to Farside, all those years ago. He'd said that when I came back, he'd know. Anyway I was getting lessons from Arbel, and then one night I had this dream. And the next morning I knew it was time to head east. The dream had made that clear."

  He paused, sorting out how to continue the story, then looked around at the others. "Actually," he said, "the story starts on Farside. In Nine-Month, seven years ago, in a great war that killed more people than you can imagine, soldiers and civilians. And I was in it, along with maybe fifty million other men. I won't even try to describe how it was fought." He looked at Varia. "It was way bigger than the first World War. And had airplanes with a hundred-foot wing span, flying more than a thousand miles on a flight, at two, three hundred miles an hour. Dropping bombs weighing a ton. There were tanks as heavy as locomotives, going twenty, thirty miles an hour..."

  He looked at Cyncaidh and shook his head. "I'm going to leave out most of the story. It would take too long, and wouldn't make any sense to you. But anyway, I was a spy, in a country called Germany. At a place where the Germans were trying to have people trained as..." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "As magicians, I guess you could say. And the people they had teaching us were from a place called..." His eyes locked on Cyncaidh's. "Hithmearc."

  Cyncaidh jerked at the name. "Hithmearc!" he echoed. The name had jarred Varia, too.

  "I see that means something to you." Macurdy looked at Varia again. "Some voitar had crossed to Farside through a gate in the Bavarian mountains. And I was their most promising student, so they took me through it into Hithmearc. To see if I'd survive the gate, and if I did, to train me there." He didn't elaborate, and didn't give them time to ask.

  "The voitu in charge was their crown prince," he went on. "Named Kurqôsz. They'd done some sorcery to make the gate open every day. I managed to close it later. Permanently, I think."

  A thunderstruck Cyncaidh was staring at Macurdy, who ignored him now, and told about his dream. "It didn't feel like an ordinary dream," he finished. "It seemed to me, when I woke up, that it was a warning. A message that the Voitusotar plan to invade Yuulith. And that people—you people, Wollerda, the dwarves, everyone in Yuulith—needed to be warned.

  "After a few hours I didn't feel so sure anymore. It got to feeling pretty unreal, even to me, so I couldn't see myself convincing anyone else. But I left anyway, and headed east. Then Vulkan found me, like he'd said he would, and told me something that made me sure again."

  He paused, gesturing toward the boar. "Because he wears a saddle, and doesn't tear people up and eat them like the stories tell, it's easy for people to look at me as if I'd conquered and tamed him. But no one can conquer him, and he never needed taming, or changing, or anything else. He is what he is. And between him and me, he's number one. I make the decisions because he tells me I'm supposed to. And he stays with me because ... because we were intended to do this together. He's the one with real power, but he has to operate through a human. And that's me."

  He paused, frowning. "Where was I?"

  "Vulkan told you something that made you sure again," Varia said.

  "Oh yeah." He turned to Vulk
an. "Why don't you tell them?"

  Vulkan did, his "voice" speaking in their minds, describing what he'd felt while visiting the Scrub Coast. «And while I have your attention,» he said, «I will add this: Macurdy has more power than he admits, even to himself. I suspect his excessive modesty is not entirely curable. It is partly the result of a Farside culture in which assertiveness and self pride are frowned on, and overcompensation praised.» He turned his massive head, to fix his red eyes on Macurdy. «And because his is a family with secrets, and discourages the drawing of attention. And finally because on Farside, powers like Macurdy's are severely disapproved of—as he has learned to his distress.

  «Fortunately his self-deprecation, though sincere, is superficial. He invariably exercises his powers as the need arises. And the need will arise, at levels beyond anything he has faced before.»

  Vulkan turned his gaze to Cyncaidh. «As yet I perceive the vector only vaguely, but it is heavy with power and danger, both sorcerous and military. And the controlling power is highly mercurial, which makes it unpredictable.»

  Their stories had sobered Cyncaidh. Now he nodded. "I have something to add to your accounts," he said. "Something that makes the threat seem more real than it otherwise might.

  "As Varia can attest, there are two principal books on ylvin history, copied, recopied, and extended over the centuries. One is on the Western Empire, the other on the Eastern, and they agree on our origins. We once dwelt in Hithmearc, and on Ilroin, a large island some sixty miles off the Hithik Coast. Then the Voitusotar came, and over a period of time conquered Hithmearc. We were their most difficult adversary, because we were not susceptible to their sorceries. In those times we had not interbred as much with humans, and our powers were greater than they are now. Or so say the histories.

  "At one point we stalled the voitik conquest for years, and for this they hated us.

  "Like ourselves, they are not a prolific species, and though they live long, they were not so numerous as the Hithik humans. They age throughout their lives, much as humans do, but more slowly. And usually they die while still able-bodied, when their heart fails.

  "But they made up for their lack of numbers with their talents. And they were much more than sorcerers. They were superb warriors, very tall and fleet of foot. Also, they supposedly share a hive mind, by which they coordinate their actions. And while they could not tolerate riding on horseback..." He paused. "This part is rather difficult to credit, but supposedly their speed and endurance while running is such that their infantry was equivalent to light cavalry."

  He looked his audience over. He had their full attention.

  "Eventually they destroyed our army on Hithmearc, and many of our people fled across the straits to Ilroin, which was our ancient homeland. Of the rest, the Voitusotar killed brutally almost all the men and boys. The women and girls they kept for themselves, as slaves. Or gave to their human allies, for public brutalization." He grimaced ruefully. "Brutalities as extreme as Quaie's at Ferny Cove, and on a much greater scale."

  "We—our ancestors, that is—felt safe on Ilroin, for on the water, the Voitusotar get so seasick, they die. But after one hundred twelve years they sent a human army against us, on human ships. At great cost of lives we fought them off, and destroyed many of their ships. But as soon as they'd withdrawn, we began to plan our exile. Because we knew—knew that the Voitusotar would try again with a larger army.

  "A tale had been recorded by the ancients, of seafarers who supposedly had traveled far to the west, and encountered land. A land they named Vismearc. The descriptions were grotesque, extreme enough to seem imaginary, which of course caused doubt that the trip had ever been made.

  "But the globe had been measured, so to speak, by our astronomers, so clearly there was a shore out there somewhere. And it seemed we were doomed unless we put much more than sixty miles between us and our enemies. We cut whole forests to build ships. Hemp became a major crop, for sails and cordage, and the tapping of pine for pitch and tar was greatly increased."

  He spread his hands, which surprised Varia. Her husband seldom gestured when talking.

  "In short," he said, "the whole population of Ilroin left the island, and ... here we are."

  Cyncaidh sat back, his jaw set. "That, of course, is history. And now we come to the point of this tale. Fifteen or so years ago, a ship of peculiar design took refuge from a storm, in a fishing port on the ylvin Coast. Her crew did not answer hails, as if they didn't understand Yuultal. Their only response was to threaten with crossbows and swords.

  "When the storm blew over, she left.

  "Afterward, coast guard sloops landed at several harbors along the Scrub Coast, to see if it had landed there—small places, where fishing and smuggling are a way of life. Far to the south, they learned of a vessel which had taken refuge there from a storm. Its crew too had been hostile, firing crossbows at the local men who approached. So the locals assumed they were pirates exploring northward from the Southern Sea. Which they may have been, though they left without attacking the village.

  "At any rate, the eastern empire built a flotilla of rams, and added additional sloops and light schooners to the coast guard. In case the strangers had in fact been scouts for some ambitious pirate fleet. But after four or five years without further intrusions, the rams were decommissioned and their crews let go, to save the expense."

  Cyncaidh stopped again, examining his strong, long-fingered soldier hands. "In a recent packet of reports from Aaerodh, my ducal manor, there was a letter from my senior healer, A'duaill. He'd dreamt of a voitik invasion, and thought I should know of it.

  "I told Gavriel of A'duaill's dream—A'duaill is a splendid healer, but has never claimed to be a seer—and His Majesty's reaction was much like my own: dreams are dreams. Neither of us connected it with the strange ships on the coast."

  Cyncaidh's patrician chin jutted forward, lips pressed briefly tight. "And now I have these reports of yours, which I find quite troubling. I'll tell Gavriel of them, but even combined they're a thin basis on which to recommend mobilization or other readiness actions. As the Council will surely tell us, should we propose any. And they hold the purse strings.

  "But I'll recommend to the emperor that we pass your story on to Colroi, the capital of the Eastern Empire, and leak your reports here at home. Gavriel will approve, and Duinarog has a considerable pamphlet press which will love it. Then, if there is an invasion, our people will not be caught so unprepared mentally. And if there isn't, the story will blow over in time, and be forgotten."

  Macurdy nodded. When you bit down on the evidence, it wasn't very meaty, just suggestive as hell. "Well then," he said, "we'll wait till the invasion fleet arrives. And hope that's not too late."

  But thin as the evidence was, after what Cyncaidh had told them, he had no doubt at all there'd be an invasion fleet. The only question was when.

  Until then, the kings of the Rude Lands would be even less ready than the ylver to do anything. But he'd visit each of them, he told himself, and describe the threat as he saw it. Call it the possible threat. And tell them if it should happen—if it should—another joint army might be needed. Make it sound theoretical, speculative, and ask no one to do anything. Then, when it happened, they'd be used to the idea, prepared for it, and they'd look to him.

  Sound the alarm, he told himself, but softly. Otherwise they'll resist the idea, and resent me for it.

  * * *

  Minutes later, Cyncaidh was on his way to the palace. Varia went inside to look after domestic matters, particularly the morale of staff after the poisoning death of Zednis. And Vulkan—Vulkan disappeared. To snoop, Macurdy supposed, perhaps eavesdrop around. He wondered what some unprepared ylver would think, to suddenly see Vulkan's great formidable bulk listening to their conversation with great bristly ears.

  Macurdy went to the room his sons had slept in, and knocked. They were, he discovered, wrapping up a discussion they'd begun the night before, on what to do next. Dohns had
decided to return to the Cloister with his brother.

  "Maybe we'll see you there, sir," he said. Hope tinged his voice.

  "Maybe you will. I expect to be there by Ten-Month at the latest. I'll make a point of looking you up." He paused. "I don't plan to leave till morning. Maybe we can go somewhere today."

  Ohns looked at him, surprised. "I—we would like that, sir."

  "Good. I'll talk to Varia, and see if she can go with us. The last time I saw her, eighteen years ago, she told me about the animal park here. They have wild animals from all parts of Yuulith, from the Southern Sea to the far north."

  Ohns looked pleased, and Dohns enthusiastic.

  Macurdy went to find Varia, and an hour later, the Macurdy family rode to the zoo together in an open carriage. And Curtis got to see the 800-pound Panthera atrox, the boreal lion. Varia teased that it was the animal he'd been named for, though on Farside, Panthera atrox had been extinct for millennia. "It was Raien," she said, "who named you 'The Lion of Farside.' "