by Julian May
"Come then," Apollo invited. The bubble ascended slowly. Aiken's visor was open, his face like a skull wrapped in tight scarlet skin and his eyes deep as wells.
Nodonn blazed. "Will you go to death silent?" The Sword was ready. "Very well!" In the ultimate stroke, Nodonn called up all the energies of his brain and flung them simultaneously with the full power of the photonic weapon. The resulting flare was blinding green and white, clothed in a shimmering plasma haze. The doom-clap that accompanied it flogged the atmosphere and sent echoes caroming endlessly between the hills of Armorica and the Breton highlands across the wide strait.
Aiken was there. Unshielded. Golden.
"No," said the Battlemaster.
The Shining One was smiling and his mind open wide; and Nodonn in despair knew that it had ad been planned and he allowed to do his utmost, so that those watching would receive the final affirmation—either through farsenses or through the evidence of their own eyes.
Aiken unfastened the baldric holding the Spear's powerpack and lifted the apparatus off. Held motionless in the strengthening dawn, Nodonn felt an insidious PK impulse working at his own harness. The straps slipped from his shoulders and the Sword's hilt was torn from his nerveless grasp. At the same time the Spear went flying from Aiken and both of the weapons disappeared.
Nodonn removed his helmet and stood poised in the air. His shielding nimbus had evaporated in his final effort against the Nonborn King, but his body was sunrise bright.
Aiken was a naked star.
His mind reached out "I need yours, too," was all he said.
Apollo flamed and all his power passed, and what was left was only gray ashes and a blackened sliver hand falling toward the sea, and a last ironic thought fading.
The King of the Many-Colored Land caught the hand. The sun was coming up behind his Castle of Glass, and his people were singing a Song that might be for him.
It was good enough, he thought and headed for home.
***
THE END OF PART FOUR
Epilogue
ON OCALA ISLAND it was still fast night.
The tree frogs were practicing overtures for the autumn mating season. Fireflies blinked in the jacaranda trees next to the porch. The moon, bronze and low, seemed to be mirroring Marc Remillard's sardonic, one-sided smile.
"Was that what you expected?" Patricia Castellane asked.
He slowly rose from his canvas deck chair and stretched, the perfect metapsychic Wagnerite. "Just about. The mental absorption ploy was—unusual. The Poltroyan race were accustomed to batten on their foes in a similar fashion during their precoadunate days, but I've never heard of a human being doing it. Rather baroque. Interesting, though ..."
She stood beside him. The lingering memories of the drama just played in Europe flickered in his mind. The conscious levels were tranquil again, diamond-hard above the scars. "I'm so glad you're better," she said. "I was afraid."
His laugh was insouciant, rich with the old casual power. "You should know by now that Abaddon takes a lot of killing. I was taken by surprise. It won't happen again."
"You're still going?"
"If I don't, he'll come to me."
"That might be preferable."
"I'm considering it" He kissed her, put an arm around her shoulder. There was a chill wind off the lake.
She sighed. "Well—it should be a very interesting Grand Tourney."
"Perhaps we should plan to attend," said Marc Remillard. Hand in hand, they went into the house.
With the cooler air came dew. The frogs fell silent, the fireflies hid away among the foliage, and Ocala Island slept.
***
THE END OF
THE NONBORN KING
Volume IV of The Saga of Pliocene Exile,
titled THE ADVERSARY, tells of
the struggle against the fall of Night,
of a couple of redemptions and an ambiguity,
and of an ultimate recurvature back
to the Galactic Milieu
where it all began.
