The Nonborn King

by Julian May

  Yosh's famished chaliko took advantage of the halt to scratch up a few chufas from the muddy earth. He urged her forward again with a soft, "Hup, Kiku." She came to the edge of a precipice and looked down at the foaming torrent below, whickering uneasily. The defile was narrow but extremely steep, clogged by downed timber. It was spanned by a simple bridge of adze-flattened logs. At either end of this were the "gates," man-high cairns, each topped by a pole from which dangled a colored parchment lantern shaped like a fantastic horned skull. Large fireflies imprisoned inside were a fitful source of illumination.

  If a wayfarer wanted to use the bridge, it was obligatory to drop the customary offering into holes at the base of the cairns. Gate-crashers were subject to being eaten by the troll.

  Yosh unfastened his capelike straw mino and let it slide off so that the ominous magnificence of his red-laced uma-yoroi would be clearly visible to any nocturnal predator. In two swift movements he replaced his straw rain hat with the armored kabuto. When his hands came down from his head, they gripped the makeshift (but lethal) nodachi that had been sheathed behind his right shoulder.

  He held the longsword before him. He and Kiku stood as motionless as an equestrian statue. The ghostly lanterns bobbed and flickered. Tepid rain rattled on the jungle greenery and a few tree frogs peeped a spring madrigal.

  "Now, listen here, you!" Yosh said in ringing tones. "I'm a man of honor. I hold to the Human-Firvulag Alliance. I've paid your damn tolls all the way from the Paris Basin without a mumbling word. But now I've got only three silver bits left. If I give them to you, I'll be flat skinned when I pull into Goriah city tonight. No money for a bed, for food, fodder for my mount, anything. So I'm not paying! You'll have to take it out in trade!"

  The frogs fell silent, leaving only the sound of rain and the cascade's muffled drone. Suddenly a green glow sprang into being at the near end of the log bridge. Something tall and dripping and hideous bounded onto the trail, menacing the Japanese warrior and his horselike steed. The apparition was reptilian, with webbed hands and a scaly body. The head resembled the horned skull of the lanterns, covered in pebbly hide, and there were enormous bulging eyes that shone like green searchlights.

  Before the thing could pounce, Yosh opened his mouth. He summoned forth the kiai—the spirit-shout of the ancient bujutsu masters—a vocal vibration of such stupefying volume and horrific timbre that it seemed to strike the troll like a physical blow. The creature staggered and fell back on one knee, clapping its taloned flippers over the sides of its head.

  Urged on by Yosh, the chaliko mare leaped. She was a huge animal, more than nineteen hands. Her forefeet, armed with semiretractile claws larger than a man's palm, landed only centimeters from the troll's paralyzed body. The point of Yosh's great nodachi hovered above the belly of the Firvulag.

  "The sword is iron—not bronze or glass," Yosh said. "You speak Standard English? This is a blood-metal weapon! Nopar o beyn! One prick, and you're warm meat. I've killed twenty-two Howlers and two Tanu with this nodachi, and I'm ready to pop for my first Firvulag if you just blink ugly."

  The troll let its breath out in a fluttering gasp. "You—say you hold to the Alliance, Lowlife?"

  "I have so far. Are you going to be reasonable about the toll?"

  The creature's eyes blazed. "Don't I deserve to make a living? Three times the bridge washed out this winter and I had to fix it! Two bits is cheap. I'm not even making my maintenance expenses. And besides, the royal tax gougers take a thirty percent rake-off."

  The sword didn't waver. "I can't afford it Times are hard in the North Country with the world turned upside down since the Flood. That's why I'm going to Goriah. Well? You ready to die for a lousy two bits?"

  The monster's radiance dimmed. "Oh, hell. Pass and be damned to you. Look—can I shape-shift and get up? This cold mud is murder on my lumbago."

  Yosh nodded and lifted his sword. The reptilian form quivered and seemed shot through with sparks of color that coalesced into the softly gleaming body of a medium-sized exotic. His face was seamed, his nose long and pointed, and his beady little eyes glowered from under extraordinarily bushy red brows. He wore a conical scarlet cap with matching breeches (now soaked with mud), a ruffled shirt laced at the throat, a leather jerkin embroidered in exquisite designs of twined stylized animals, and hobnail jackboots with turned-up tips.

  "Look, we can make a deal," the troll said. "You're still more than thirty Lowlife leagues from the city of the Shining One. A long way to go on a bad night. And like you said, your wallet's short of the jinglies. You'd need even more than those three bits to find decent up-putting in Goriah. But my brother-in-law Malachee runs a nice tavern just a few kloms from here where you can get a good meal and a flop and a bag of roots for your brute for only two bits. Then in the morning I'll let you across for a cut rate: one silver piece instead of the usual two. What say?"

  Yosh's eyes narrowed. "No shit?"

  The Firvulag turned up his hands. "Humans and Little People are allies! King Sharn and Queen Ayfa made it official. Nobody'll zap you in your bed at Malachee's."

  "But a human staying at a Firvulag tavern—"

  "Not so common in the hinterlands, but getting pretty usual around this neck of the woods, especially since the Shining One sent out his call for recruits. Our people can use the business! Look, I sent two other Lowlives to Malachee's already tonight. Footsloggers. You'll have company."

  Yosh grinned. He slid the longsword back into its scabbard on his back. A touch of his heels and a slight body movement on his part caused the chaliko to draw away from the bedraggled exotic. "Okay. I accept the deal. How do I find this place?"

  "Go back along the trail until you come to that turn leading to the cliffs alongside the Strait of Redon. Hang a right at the cork-oak grove, then follow the ley until you run smack into a tumulus. That's it. Malachee's Toot. Tell 'em Kipol Greenteeth sent you."

  He shambled to the edge of the gorge, then looked back over his shoulder. "That battle-yell of yours is really a traditional Firvulag gag, you know. But the old tricks are the best. No hard feelings." Giving a sardonic salute, Kipol Greenteeth sank into the ground.

  ***

  The tumulus, when Yosh found it, was the size of a large circus tent and overgrown with brush. It looked utterly deserted there in the stormy night, isolated on a wind-swept heath perhaps half a kilometer from the strait. The rain had quit for the moment. Torn bits of wrack scudded across the sky like squadrons of witches. Along the southwestern horizon was a pearly glow that silhouetted low coastal hills. That tantalizing light behind the headland came from Goriah, Aiken Drum's new headquarters, now the de facto capital of the Many-Colored Land. With a human operant ruling the old Tanu kingdom, it was going to be a whole new ball game in the Pliocene Exile.

  "And I can hardly wait to play!" Yosh told patient Kiku.

  He'd make a more impressive entrance arriving at Goriah in daylight, anyhow. Kiku would be fresh and sporting the handsome garniture that he'd made. They'd tow a gaudy stack of hawk kites right up to the city gates to catch people's attention. Then he'd ride into Goriah dressed to the nines in his gorgeous Muromachi Period samurai armor, with his sword at present-arms. He'd offer that sword of hand-wrought iron to Lord Aiken-Lugonn. And at last Yoshimitsu Watanabe would no longer be a ronin, a masterless wave-man adrift on the sea of life. He'd be a goshozamurai—an imperial warrior!

  Briefly, Yosh wondered what his twenty-second-century colleagues at Rocky Mountain Robotics back in good old Denver, Colorado, would say if they could see him in that hour of glory...

  Reality brought him back to Pliocene Earth. His laminated armor was heavy and leaked like a sieve. His belly flapped empty against his spine. Poor Kiku was reduced to mouthing a scraggly broom bush.

  Where could the damn tavern be? He rode around the hillock, shining his solar-battery torch into depressions and shrubbery. All he found was a little standing stone, thin and about half a meter high, with a black ideograph pain
ted on it. As he leaned from the saddle, studying this, he heard distant coarse laughter and music.

  Coming from inside the hill—?

  "Hello!" he shouted.

  The congenial sounds melted into the whistling wind.

  "Is anybody in there? Is this Malachee's Toot? Uh—Kippy Greenteeth sent me!"

  There was a grating rumble and the chaliko shied back. A rectangle outlined in dim yellow light, measuring nearly three meters high and somewhat less in width, appeared on the slope before him. The earth sank to reveal a sizable tunnel lit with flaming wall cressets. Passageways led off right and left. At the far end was a big wooden door with two peepholes like crimson eyes, from behind which came muffled noises of inebriate laughter, singing, clinks and smashes, and other indications of rampant conviviality.

  "You stand there all night, Lowlife—or come in?"

  A Firvulag adolescent, hunched and slightly spotty, but wearing a superior smile, beckoned Yosh forward. As the warrior followed the exotic youth into the righthand passage, the entrance to the hollow hill sealed behind him. Keeping his panic in check (as well as Kiku, who had gone skittish in this novel environment), Yosh rode into a dry earthen chamber where all manner of bales, sealed jars, filled sacks, and oddments of domestic equipment were lying about.

  The stripling slouched against a barrel, picking at an inflamed blackhead on his nose with one grubby fingernail. He indicated a space along one wall where straw covered the floor.

  "You put animal there. Tie to ring in wall. Roots to eat in sacks. You do feeding, grooming. Chalikos no like me." He giggled and a shadow of sinister felinity distorted his features. Kiku snorted and showed the whites of her eyes.

  Yosh dismounted. As he tended to the animal's needs, he felt the gaze of the exotic seeming to bore into the backplate of his corselet, where the great curved nodachi was still strapped.

  The boy's halting English was truculent. "You leave blood-metal sword here. In storeroom."

  Yosh didn't look at him. He continued to rub down Kiku with a handful of straw. "No. I keep my weapons and my armor with me. And in the morning, I check to be sure that none of the gear I stashed out here has been ... misplaced. I'd really be cut up if any of my things got lost—"

  In a split second he whirled about, the sword chopping down in a lightning iaijutsu motion to stop just short of the stunned Firvulag's forehead.

  "—and you might be cut up, too, kid. If you fuck around with my chaliko. Understand?"

  "Mala-chee!" the youth screeched.

  Yosh was using the sword innocently to slice open a sack of roots when the dwarfish exotic innkeeper came bustling in.

  "Now, now! What's this commotion, Nuckalarn, my lad? A new arrival? Welcome, human friend!" Malachee's face was plump and rosy. His pointed ears protruded from a crown of silky white hair. He had sleeves rolled to the elbow, very clean hands, and wore a bibbed leather apron. Giving the sword a brief glance, he winked at Yosh. "Of course you may keep your weapon with you, sir. But sheathed at all times, please. No demonstrations of martial art are allowed in Malachee's Toot"

  The boy Nuckalarn, his face broken out in ugly white fear-patches in addition to the original spots, curled his lip with forced bravado.

  "He say he cut me up with blood metal! Sonabitching Lowlife!"

  Malachee hoisted a reproachful eyebrow at Yosh.

  "A misunderstanding." The warrior beamed suavely at Malachee, ignoring the epithets that the Firvulag youth mumbled in his own tongue. After his sword was cased on his back again, he took two silver slugs from his uchi-bukuro and held them out to the innkeeper. "Permit me to pay in advance as a measure of good faith. Your good brother-in-law recommended your establishment highly."

  Malachee twinkled, took the money, and led the way to the public room. As the wooden door swung open, Yosh had an impression of pulsing ruddy light tumultuous noise, a smell of roasting meat and spilled beer, and a press of exotic merrymakers who ranged in size from apple-cheeked manikins carousing underfoot to chandelier-grazing ogres. Not one of the Firvulag wore an illusory aspect as was the almost invariable custom of the race when having commerce with humankind. Yosh was interested to see that in spite of the size variance, none of these Firvulag were physically deformed, like the mutant Howlers, nor were they meanly dressed. The medium-sized individuals, had they been attired in twenty-second-century garb, would have passed unnoticed in a typical barroom crowd on Elder Earth.

  Malachee had to shout above the din. "Right this way to a nice table! You can sit with two compatriots of yours!"

  The décor of the public room featured polished gnarled roots, slabs of ornamental minerals, massive supporting timbers embellished with gargoyle carvings, and ingenious use of fungoid motifs. As Yosh followed his host through the throng, Firvulag patrons drew away with wary expressions. Some scowled and muttered. For all the royal decrees, detente was obviously still a fragde thing.

  In the hazy glare at the other end of the room a gigantic tosspot was flailing his arms in the air like a demented windmill. He sang out a single imploring word in a surprisingly rich baritone:

  "Vaaf-na!"

  The rest of the company chorused: "Vafna! Vafna!"

  Yosh felt himself being pushed down onto one of the mushroom-shaped wooden stools at a wall table. Malachee yelled in his ear. "Enjoy the entertainment! I'll have your supper sent out! The two bits includes all you want to eat and drink! You'll share your sleeping room with these travelers, here! Thanks for coming!"

  The deep red light was brightening to orange at the far side of the room. Yosh cast an appraising glance at the two humans seated with him. One was a strapping youngster with a peachfuzz beard, wearing shabby fringed buckskins. The shy smile with which he welcomed Yosh hinted at a childish simplicity. The other man was considerably older. His threadbare blouse and torn cape were of the type worn by gray trooper noncoms. He had a stubbled underthrust jaw, greasy hair falling over eyes slitted in hostility, and the coiled-spring demeanor of an incorrigible hard case.

  "Hey, guy," the young man exclaimed to Yosh. "That's a hell of a bonzo outfit! And didn't those spooks give you room? Shooo!" He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial rasp. "Is that a sword on your back? Hey—is it iron?"

  "Yes," said Yosh.

  The hard case glowered above the rim of his beer mug. "You some kinda Mongolian, slaunch-eyes?"

  "Japanese extraction," said Yosh equably. "North American native."

  "Man, are we ever glad to meet up with you!" said the youth. "All's we got's between us is a bronze pig-tickler and a vitredur skinning knife. I's sure we'd get massacreed in our bed tonight, y'know? Shooo! But with your iron, we'll rate respect! Hey—I'm Sunny Jim Quigley, and this here's Vilkas. Who you be?"

  "My name is Watanabe." Yosh's reply was almost drowned out by the reiterated musical howl of the big Firvulag.

  "Vaaaaf-na!"

  "Vafna! Vafna! Vafna! Vafna!" chanted the other patrons. They thumped beakers, knife handles, and fists on the tables. Unseen drummers took up the beat. There was an abrupt hiss, a poof, and a flash. The tavern rocked with cheers.

  A pianolike instrument struck up a strong bass figure and five little Firvulag women came prancing coltishly into the area of fiery radiance. They sang teasing challenges in the exotic language, and the male taverngoers responded in mellow harmony. The damsels wore full skirts reminiscent of bucolic Mitteleuropa. Their headpieces, bodices, and the cuffs of their scarlet boots were lavishly adorned with gemstones that gave off hypnotic glints, filling the room with whirling tiny lights as the dancers circled to accelerating tempo.

  Yosh strained to see clearly in the red murk. Those women! Were they really—?

  The singing grew wilder. The dancers' challenge and the response of the Firvulag men blended into a rapport of almost palpable eroticism. One short musical phrase, almost shouted by the spectators, cued the women to leap one by one into the air. As they rose, their costumes vanished like smoke and it seemed that smooth-skinn
ed nymphs with blazing hair writhed inside an inferno of hot colors. Percussion instruments clashed and rang and the mixed voices reached a hammering crescendo. And then the incandescent bodies were consumed. The sound fell away, lost in languor, melancholy as the fall of bright ashes.

  The light cooled. A different female form materialized, solitary and rarefied, her breasts and thighs scarved in flowing vapor. She sang a brief lyric of heart-stopping purity and sadness. When the last note died, so did the auroral light.

  There was silence. Then every exotic in the place leaped up to utter a final deafening "Vafna!"

  "My God," said Yosh.

  Drops of sweat trickled down the youth's brow. "Shooo!"

  The rough-hewn bareneck named Vilkas emptied his mug, slammed it onto the table, and blasphemed the Tanu Goddess. "Gave you a nice little buzz, didn'ey? Real turn-on—right? Well, enjoy it suckers, and eat your hearts out 'Cause that all you're gonna get. All any of this peg-up lot'll get." He swept his arm wide to indicate the mob of bleary-eyed, grinning habitués, slowly emerging from the dance's spell. "Damn Firvulag bitches! They only do it by remote control till their menfolk marry 'em. And us humans're on the wrong frequency, so we don't get none—and they know we can never force 'em because of the goddam teeth. So the spook cunts laugh at us! They know we got hardly any Lowlife women."

  "Teeth?" said Yosh blankly. "I never got close enough to a Firvulag female to look one in the mouth. What's special about their teeth?"

  Sunny Jim looked away, abashed.

  Vilkas gave a bark of mirthless laughter. "Not regular teeth, slaunch-eyes." He glared meaningfully at Yosh for a moment then whispered, "Other teeth. Down there."

  "Ah." The ronin smiled coolly. "I can see how that would cramp your style. You don't look like the type to ask politely. Or get many offers of free samples."

  A serving lad materialized at Yosh's elbow and began to unload a tray. There was a platter of big broiled ribs coated with pungent sauce, a bowl of something smelling like oyster stew, a loaf of purple-tinted bread, and an enormous tankard of beer. As a final touch the waiter set down a saucer filled with tiny mushrooms, the caps scarlet with white flecks.