The Witling Page 3

  Naturally, Pelio’s position in the royal court was an embarrassment. King Shozheru lacked the harshness of will to execute his firstborn—and such execution was the only accepted method of clearing the line of succession for the secondborn. It was not surprising that the closest things Pelio had to friends at court were the obsequious intriguers who lied to and flattered him; the closest thing to respect, the honest hatred of his brother and his mother.

  Every few seasons, protocol dictated that Pelio take his yacht and visit some corner of the kingdom. Often such tours exposed him to less skillfully disguised derision than he faced at the Summerpalace, but at least the faces were different. Besides, the Summerkingdom was such a vast and beautiful place, it almost made him forget himself and his weaknesses. And sometimes the trips were not as tame as the royal advisers would like. Perhaps this would be one of those times. The strange message he had received that morning was anonymous, yet explicit: there had been a skirmish at Bodgaru with monsters or Snowfolk … .

  The troopers ashore gathered in the tow ropes and pulled the barge toward the timbers that cushioned the wharf. The prefect and the garrison band were almost directly below him now. He smiled slightly as he saw Moragha start. The prefect must have felt the warm wind blowing off the yacht.

  The boat bounced gently against the timbers and the soldiers made her fast. Pelio saluted the crowd and turned away from the railing. “Here, Samadhom,” he called softly to his watchbear. The sand-colored beast padded over to him and began licking his hand. The prince trusted his watchbear more than any of his guards—and as a passive defense against keng attack, the shaggy animal was probably as effective as any Azhiri, Guildsmen excepted. Pelio patted Samadhom’s head, and then, together with his silent guards, he descended the stairway to the first deck. The lords and ladies who joined them at the second deck were not so quiet, but Pelio did not respond to their eternal, artificial good cheer. With his entourage close behind, he crossed the filigreed iron dropbridge to the wharf, and walked to where Parapfu Moragha stood at backbreaking attention.

  “You may rest, good Parapfu.”

  Moragha relaxed with visible relief and signaled the garrison band to sound Rest. Across the wharf, the townsfolk broke the silence they had kept since the Prince set foot on land.

  “Your Highness, the people of my prefecture—myself included—welcome your visit with the greatest love and respect.” Moragha’s head bobbed with enthusiasm. The prefect turned and waved Pelio up the inlaid steps that led to the prefectural manse. “There are so many things we have to show Your Royal-Imperial Highness.” Moragha dropped into step just behind Pelio, cutting between the prince and his retinue. “Bodgaru is the northernmost reach of Summer, yet we maintain the spirit of green growing things in our hearts and works.” He waved at the jade garden that stood on both sides of their path. Pelio followed his gesture but did not comment. He saw that the green and yellow stones were cleverly carved, and he could dimly seng that the density patterns of the stonework resembled those of real plants. But there was a touch of gaucherie in imitating life with stone or snow. It was the sort of thing he had seen taken to an abstracted extreme in the Snowking’s crystal palace at the ends of the world. “And,” Moragha rushed on when he got no response, “the mining caves of Bodgaru are the largest in the world. Summerfolk have mined the copper hereabouts for more than a century … .”

  From the rear of the party, servants continued to teleport a warm breeze in from the southern hemisphere. Beside Pelio, the prefect was beginning to sweat in his tooled leather oversuit, but the warm air had less to do with that than the prince’s continued silence. Few flatterers could contend with his stony silence and expressionless gaze. At court, his silence was regarded as a sign of boorishness, stupidity. And in truth, there was arrogance in Pelio’s manner—but there was more distrust and loneliness.

  Finally Moragha’s prepared speech ground to a halt. The two walked silently for many paces, until Pelio looked at the other, and said, “Tell me about last night’s skirmish, good Parapfu.”

  “How did you—” the prefect started, then gargled back his surprise. “There is not a great deal to tell, Your Highness. The affair is still a mystery. My agents detected intruders in the hills to the north. I dispatched troops from the garrison. They encountered a large flying creature, which they destroyed.”

  “And the intruders?” prodded the boy.

  The prefect waved his hand in casual dismissal. “Witl—persons of no account, Your Highness.”

  Witlings! So his anonymous informant had written the truth. Imagine witlings fighting normal people. “Snowfolk?” Pelio asked casually, trying to hide his excitement.

  “No, Your Highness. At least, I have never seen any Snowmen like them.”

  “I will interview them.”

  “But Baron-General Ngatheru has expert interrogators at Atsobi … .”

  You self-contradicting fool, thought Pelio. So you have something really interesting here.

  “The strangers have been moved to the garrison?”

  “Uh, no, Your Highness, they are in one of the dungeons beneath my manse. The baron-general thought—”

  “Fine, Parapfu. Then I will interview these strange prisoners immediately.”

  The prefect knew better than to oppose a royal whim, even Pelio’s. “Certainly, Your Highness. It will be most convenient to use the transit pool in my manse.”

  By now they had reached the rose-quartz terrace surrounding the prefect’s home. The manse was only five hundred feet from the lake, but it was some fifty feet up the side of the ridge line that protected the Royal Road’s terminus against surveillance from the north. No wonder Moragha had not suggested they teleport to the manse: using a transit pool in weather like this would be a cold and unpleasant business.

  Like most buildings in wintry regions, the manse had a doorway carved through its walls. Pelio liked doorways; they gave him some of the mobility other people had naturally. Inside the manse there was too little space for Pelio’s wind rengers to do their job, and the rooms were chill and stale. The pale light filtering through the windows was a good deal less cheerful than what Pelio was used to in the open ballrooms of the Sunmerpalace. Moragha’s bondsmen circulated among the nobles with drink and candy. The prefect had even managed to import a small group of singers from south of Atsobi. It was a festive scene … of sorts.

  Parapfu led the prince and his guards away from the crowd and through a wilted interior garden to the manse’s transit pool, where his servants produced watertight slickers.

  “The dungeon is nearly sixteen hundred feet below ground level, Your Highness, so I deem the transit pool the most convenient entrance.”

  Pelio nodded, slipped into the slicker. If Moragha were sufficiently skilled, they could jump right from where they were standing. But sixteen hundred feet was a long way down. Once he had been jumped two thousand feet downward—directly, without first submerging in a transit pool. The heat shock had given him a headache that lasted a nineday.

  The water in the pool was cold and oily. Pelio was grateful for the watertight suit, even if it was an awkward nuisance. (It just proved again that the only sensible place for people to live was in the tropics, where winter never came.) In the water around him, Pelio could seng a familiar tension as Moragha prepared to jump. A second passed. The tension “brightened,” then twisted in upon itself as the pool and its contents were exchanged with the destination pool.

  They bobbed to the surface, the guards immediately taking positions around the pool. Pelio and Moragha pulled themselves from the water. The air stank, and the rockwort on the walls glowed bright green: the air hadn’t been changed for many hours. The green-lit dungeon was large, and fairly warm—yet it was still nothing more than an empty space carved from abyssal bedrock. Without the constant attention of the keepers who knew its location the cell would quickly become a coffin for its prisoners.

  “All right, on your feet,” came Moragha’s sharp
voice. His man began kicking at the dark-clothed shapes on the floor. Pelio suppressed a gasp as the first of the strangers stood. The man—creature?—was incredibly tall, well over six feet. But even more grotesque was the spindly thinness of his limbs. The fellow looked as though he would shatter if he ever took a bad fall.

  “I said get up. Come to attention. You have been accorded an undeserved honor. Get up!” Moragha aimed a kick at the second creature, who rolled lithely to its feet as if it had been watching them alertly all the while.

  To Pelio, the rest of the universe retreated to a position of total irrelevance. He didn’t hear the stifled gasps of the guards. He didn’t notice the silence that stretched on and on.

  She was beautiful. The girl stood tall, as tall as Pelio, yet slender as a woods-doe. Even in the dim light her coveralls revealed the strange perfection of her figure. And her face—its beauty was unworldly. Her features were sharp, her nose and chin almost pointed. It was as if the dark, grotesque face of the tall one had been treated by a kinder artist. While the skin of the Snowfolk was chalky white, and Pelio’s was grayish green, her skin was almost black in the rockwort’s light. Her smooth face might have been carved from darkwood. All the childhood fairy tales of woods-elves and dryads came rushing to mind. She was the stuff of dreams.

  Pelio spent an unmeasured time lost in the deep, dark eyes that stared from that miraculous face. Finally the spell weakened and he asked faintly, “And she … they are witlings, Parapfu?”

  “As I said, Your Highness,” the prefect replied, looking at Pelio strangely.

  “Do they speak Azhiri?”

  “At least a little.”

  Pelio turned back to the girl, and spoke slowly, “What is your name?”

  “Yoninne.” Her answer was clear, but with overtones of fear and tension.

  “Ionina? A strange name. Where are you come from, Ionina?”

  “From—” Her answer was interrupted by an abrupt though unintelligible command from the spindly giant. The girl replied in kind, then turned back to Pelio. “No, I no tell that.” She backed away from them, looking both defiant and brave … . And she a witling, thought Pelio.

  Then he made his decision, and tried not to think of what might happen when his father heard of it. “Prefect, you have done well to detect and capture these intruders; I commend you. They seem interesting indeed. I will take them with me on my return to the Summerpalace.”

  “Your Highness! These are dangerous people. The monsters that accompanied them were so loud that we could hear them even here in Bodgaru.”

  Pelio turned on the prefect, and his smile was full of vengeance. “Dangerous, you say, good Parapfu? And they witlings? How could they be dangerous? Did they harm Ngatheru’s troops?”

  “No, Your Highness,” admitted Moragha, the barest hint of sullenness creeping into his voice. “In fact, if they had attempted any attack on the troops, they almost certainly would be dead now. But sir, it is not their persons that are so dangerous. Baron-General Ngatheru is convinced that they can explain the monster fragments that were left after the battle.”

  “Fine. I will take whatever of those fragments you have. Don’t interrupt. If my cousin Ngatheru is still upset with the situation, let him take it up with me or my father,” he said, praying that Ngatheru would decide to let the matter drop. After all, the baron-general was five tiers below Pelio as formal nobility was counted.

  “Yes, Your Highness.” The prefect came briefly to attention as he capitulated.

  Pelio took a last look into the dryad’s dark, mysterious eyes, then turned to slip into the transit pool. She is the most beautiful creature …

  … And, like me, a witling.

  Four

  Me? Play up to that flat-noised, gray-faced savage? I’d rather die.” Yoninne Leg-Wot crossed her thick, muscular arms and glared at Bjault.

  Ajão leaned toward the irate pilot as far as the leather restraints would permit. “Look, Yoninne, I’m not asking you to, to do anything immoral. I’m just saying that this fellow likes you—and he’s obviously very powerful. If his title,” and here he pronounced an Azhiri phrase, “means what I think, then he is the number-one or number-two man in their state, even as young as he seems. We need his goodwill.”

  For a long moment Leg-Wot scowled down at the boat’s polished deck. Bjault suddenly wondered if she were really so disgusted at the thought of getting friendly with the young Azhiri, or if she were just so twisted by past romantic failures that she couldn’t even playact anymore.

  It wasn’t until this Pelio had talked to them that Ajão realized how much Leg-Wot looked like an Azhiri. She was a little tall, perhaps, but she had the build and the hardness—if not the coloring—of the aliens. Of course there were many differences: the Azhiri bone and cartilage structure was vastly different. Their features looked as though they had been pressed from soft clay, then smoothed until nose, chin, brow, and ears were all rounded and indistinct. Pelio was either very spoiled or very lonely to take to someone who must look as exotically strange as Leg-Wot.

  But this was exactly the sort of good fortune they needed now. Less than an hour after Pelio left the dungeon, Bjault and Leg-Wot had been teleported (what other word could he use?) to a clean, comfortable cell, where they were treated to warm baths and a meal. The next morning, they had been led to a small lake—to board the strange round boat that floated there. Now Bjault guessed the solution to several of the mysteries that had confronted them before their capture. And if Pelio were really taking them elsewhere—as he had said in the dungeon—then that guess would be put to the test in just a few minutes.

  Finally the woman answered him. “I don’t see that it really matters, Bjault. You say that sucking up to this fellow is the only chance we have for survival. I say that it’s just the difference between dying slow and dying fast. You yourself told me the local plants are tainted with heavy metals. I suppose we can still eat them, but we’ll eventually be poisoned—no matter how chummy I get with this big shot. Our only hope is for rescue, but the suit radios are so damn weak, and this planet’s ionosphere is so active, that any signal we send would get smeared unrecognizable. And even if Novamerika knew we were alive, it would be a stupid gamble for them to risk another ferry trying to pull us out of here.” She lay back limply. Her old spirit seemed completely quenched.

  It’s almost as though she’s making excuses, thought Bjault, as if she’d rather not be rescued. “You may not care whether ‘the dying is slow or fast,’ Yoninne, but the distinction is important to me, and perhaps to the whole human race. From what Pelio said, I think he’s got part of our equipment: the ablation skiff, the pistols … and the maser. With the maser we could make ourselves heard on Novamerika; they must be listening to the telemetry station Draere set up. And as for the ‘risk’ they’d be taking to rescue us: don’t you realize what we’ve stumbled into? This world could be the greatest find anyone has made since mankind left Old Earth—the greatest discovery in thirteen-thousand years. These Azhiri can teleport . Even if their trick doesn’t violate relativity, even if they can’t ‘jump’ faster than light, it still means that the entire structure of human colonization is going to be transformed. All down the centuries, man’s colonies have been isolated by an abyss of time and space, and by the enormous cost of travel from one solar system to another. Colonial civilizations, as on Homeworld, rise and fall just as surely and just as rapidly as they did on Old Earth. No doubt man has colonized several thousand worlds, but we know of only a few hundred, and most of those through hearsay. Whatever greatness a civilization achieves dies with it, simply because we are so isolated.”

  Ajão realized his voice was gradually rising. He was making a point that haunted many, including Leg-Wot. How often and how loudly had he heard the pilot denounce the Homeworld Union for not spending more money on interstellar colonization, “trade,” and radio searches for unknown civilizations. “But now,” he continued, more softly, “we may have found a way around al
l this. If we can find the secret of the Azhiri Talent—even if we can alert Novamerika and eventually Homeworld to its existence—then the distances between the stars will not matter, and there could be a truly interstellar civilization.”

  Leg-Wot looked thoughtful, less glum. Bjault had always believed that humanity as a whole was one of the few things she really cared about. “I see what you mean. We’ve got to get back word, whether we survive or not. And we’ve got to learn everything we can about these people.” Her face lit with sudden, unthinking enthusiasm. “Why do they always teleport from one pool of water to another? I’ll bet these guys have a high-class technology hidden beneath all the medieval window dressing. The pools are some sort of transmitting devices.”

  Ajão breathed an inward sigh of relief that the girl had snapped out of her mood. It was hard enough dealing with his own discouragement. He shook his head, and said, “I think these people are every bit as backward as we thought before, Yoninne. I’ll wager that teleportation is a natural mental ability with them.”

  “Well, then, why do they always seem to teleport from pools of water?”

  Bjault’s reply was lost in the shrill whistle that suddenly sounded from one of the boat’s upper decks. It was almost like a steam whistle, though Ajão couldn’t see where the sound came from. Whatever its origin, the whistle obviously signaled something important. The two guards who a moment before had been playing a dice game—at least it looked like dice, even though the stones were dodecahedra—stood up abruptly. One of them swept the dice into a leather bag. They both settled back in padded couches and strapped themselves in. The moment Ajão had seen all those couches, with their uniform system of restraints, he had guessed that they were only incidentally used to tie down prisoners. It was just one more bit of evidence for his theory. In another few moments he hoped to see a much more important confirmation.

  The whistle continued to wail for nearly a minute, as crewmen and soldiers took their places. When the tone abruptly ended, he could hear the townspeople cheering on the pier somewhere behind him. They had dutifully assembled (or been assembled) to see their ruler off. It fit the cultural picture he had of this Azhiri state.