Kier looked thoughtfully at the girl. He said, almost with sadness, for he knew what he must put upon her, “From the Queen’s lands.”
A transformation took place in the boy’s face. Ariane, a great noble, had, with Kier’s words, soared even higher-- near to divinity in the simple warman’s world. He dropped to his knees, murmuring, “Empress,” and the others did the same.
Ariane said quickly, “We cannot be sure my brother is dead, Kier.” She looked at the Rhad appealingly, but he could offer her no escape. He would need her now--and henceforward. Political reality would not spare her.
He touched his knee to the ground and said formally, “The Rhad are your soldiers, Queen-Empress.”
Her protest died without words. Presently, she replied in the words of the ancient Vyk ritual, “If the King be truly dead, the Queen rules.”
Kier stood immediately and turned to the warmen. A hard smile touched his lips. “This isn’t much for an Imperial army, but it must serve for now.” He addressed the Vulk. “I know you, Erit.”
“I know you, King.”
“Touch Gret,” he commanded.
“I have, King.”
“He is in the tower?”
“He is.”
Kier nodded grimly. “One thing has gone right, at least.”
Kier walked, controlling his pain, to the dead Questioner and took his sword. “Ariane,” he said sharply, “have all the Imperials mutinied?”
The girl regarded him tight-lipped for a moment before replying. “All the Vegans.”
“The Floridans in the tower?”
“I don’t know.”
“Erit?”
The Vulk shrugged. “Gret could sense only Vegans, King.”
“Can you reach him now?”
“No, King. I have not the strength so soon again.”
Kier addressed the young Vyk. “Can one of you guide us to the tower?”
“Not through the tel, King. We don’t know the way.”
“Ariane?”
The girl shook her head.
“Then it will have to be above ground. Is it still raining?”
“Yes, King,” a Vykan said.
“Thank God for that.” He looked once again about the torchlit question room and thought: I owe you for this, Landro. “We go, then.”
“To the tower?” the young Vyk objected. “Why not across the river?”
“Let the Vykans rest there for a time. We may have need of them later.” He spoke in the tone of a man accustomed to commanding, and the warmen were quick to acknowledge it.
Ariane, however, spoke angrily. “You made me Queen-Empress, Rhad. Are you God that we must all obey you?”
Kier suppressed admiring laughter. She was truly The Magnifico’s daughter. “Forgive me, Queen. But until you have an army of more than six men and a Vulk, I’ll have to ask that you follow me.”
The girl looked at him, blue eyes sparking. “So be it, Rebel. You are my warleader.”
Kier retrieved Ariane’s helmet. “Please cover your face, Queen-Empress.” The girl was too great a prize to risk recognition if they should have to fight their way to the Empire Tower.
She took the metal cap and put it on her head. “Until I have an army greater than a Vulk, five Vykans, and one arrogant Rhad, you may call me Ariane,” she said.
Kier half smiled. “And afterward?”
“We will see,” she answered pridefully. “I may have your head on a lance.”
With five hundred Imperials watching the Vyk division on the Jersey shore, a thousand more deployed at the landing ground, and most of the remainder concentrated at the citadel, the city of Nyor was thinly garrisoned. Kier gave thanks for that. With the young Vyk in the lead, the small band made its way cautiously through the dark streets, hiding from the watch.
Kier searched the sky for the telltale glow of the starship, but the rain clouds lay low and heavy over the city, and he could see nothing. The rain sluiced down, and now a wind had risen. Kier wondered if the rain was really poisoned on Earth as the legends said. It was one of those tales found in the
Book of Warls.
Perhaps it had once been true. “The rain brings death,” the
Warls
said, “from the burning of a thousand suns.” To Kier, however, much more worrisome was the rising wind. A starship in hovering flight was nearly weightless, and a gusting, stormy wind could made Kalin’s task almost impossible.
They walked on ground like that of Schliemann’s Troy, though they would not have known either name. In the dawn of their time, New York had been reduced to rubble a hundred times; reduced and rebuilt again. Each age had left its detritus, layer on layer to form the gigantic island mound now known as Tel-Manhat and the primitive city that ruled the stars--the city of Nyor.
In single file, and watchfully, they traveled the narrow avenue down the length of the tel toward the Empire Tower. Twice they hid in dark doorways and alleys to evade the watch, nervously patrolling the city on this rainy night that seemed filled with unease for all the Nyori.
The people remained indoors, gathered around lanterns and tallow candles, while those who had been there to see the Rhadan star king ride so foolishly gallant into the citadel told of what they had seen and what they feared would come. The Nyori were a people made cynical by history. They guarded themselves and no others.
“The Vyks have been ordered out of the city,” a sharp-eyed grandfather would say.
“The Imperials will kill them all,” a child might add, with the blood-thirst of innocence.
“And the Rhad. What of him?”
“Aiee, he will not come out of the citadel again.”
“A pity. He was a brave warleader.”
“But too trusting for the Inner Worlds. Too simple for Nyor.” And with that, the old one would end the talk, and the family would wait to see what the morning might bring.
The Vulk Erit stumbled in the wet darkness. Kier motioned to a warman. “Carry her.”
The warman, repressing a shudder out of loyalty to Ariane, swept the Vulk onto his shoulders.
Erit said, “The tower is nearby. Half a kilometer. Less.”
None of the party could see the looming mass in the rainy dark--only the eyeless Vulk.
Kier slowed to walk with Ariane. “I am sorry about Torquas, Queen,” he said in a low voice.
“If they have truly killed him, Kier,” the girl said steadily, “I’ll have their hearts roasted.”
Kier’s smile was hidden by the shadows. “You shall have them, God willing.”
“But he was only a boy, Kier--” It seemed for a moment that her voice would break. Kier would not have that --not here and now.
“He was Galacton and The Magnifico’s son, Ariane.”
The girl looked at him, and in a stray beam of light from a window he could see her eyes glittering--whether with tears or anger he could not tell.
“Twelve years old.” She accented the words bitterly.
“And a king.
The
King.”
Ariane shook her head. “What savages we are, Kier. Is there no other way to rule?”
Kier, his feudal mind coldly fixed on what must be done, said harshly, “I know of none.”
The girl would have replied, but the Vykan in the lead stopped abruptly and held up his hand for silence. Kier hurried to his side.
“There,” the Vyk said. “A guard on the tower gate.”
In the light of a torch sputtering in the rain, four Vegans lounged in the mouth of the archway opening into the tower.
Kier signaled the Vyk carrying Erit forward. The man put the Vulk down with relief. Kier said, “Are you rested, Vulk?”
“Some, King.”
“Four we can see. How many more can you sense?”
The smoothly contoured face lifted toward the facade of the immense and ancient building.
“On this level only those four. Five stories above a guardroom--with many. More than ten. I cannot sense them clearly.”
Kier knelt so that his face was level with the Vulk’s. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Sense me, Erit. What do you see?”
The Vulk shivered. “You are angry.”
“Yes, yes,” Kier said impatiently. “What else?”
“You want to fight--to kill--to--” The small creature began to tremble violently. “You are still in pain, King.”
“Am I strong enough to lead? Or must another do it?”
“You are strong enough.”
A grim smile touched Kier’s lips. “Can you reach Gret now?”
“I will try, King.”
Kier waited while the Vulk grew tense and rigid with effort. In Erit’s unhuman mind, the pictures formed fleetingly.
Gret. Brother.
She felt him somewhere in the vast darkness above her.
Sister! Here!
A command.
She struggled to hold the mind-contact.
He is with you.
It was not a question. Gret knew.
Yes.
“How many guard them?” Kier demanded.
Vegans. Many. A light in the mists above
-- The contact faded. One lingering touch that cried out:
Hurry!
Erit’s delicate shoulders sagged under Kier’s hands, and he was moved by her gift. Kier knew that Vulks could be rendered empty by the strain of prolonged mind-contact.
He gathered up the bird-light creature and carried her to Ariane. The girl took her and said in an angry, low voice, “And have you drained her, Rebel?”
“No, Queen,” he said shortly. He turned away and gathered the Vyks about him, speaking in low tones.
Presently, two warmen melted into the shadows to the left and two more to the right. Kier slipped his sword down the back of his mailed shirt so that his head hid the projecting hilt. To the last Vyk he gave orders to stay with Ariane and Erit.
“I’m not to fight for my own, then?” Ariane demanded in an imperious whisper.
“Not yet, Queen,” Kier said. “Your warleader will tell you when.”
Before she could reply to that, he walked into the cobbled street toward the pool of light and the guards. He walked unsteadily and began to sing a Vegan barracks song in a muddled voice.
The Veg stood to watch him. Two of them strung their crossbows. The officer stepped forward and challenged him.
“You there. What do you want here at this time of night?” Kier raised an arm in a Veg salute and said muzzily,
“Comrades! Take me in out of this poisonous rain, won’t you?”
“This is a forbidden area,” the officer said sharply. “Get out.”
“A drink, for the love of the Star,” Kier said.
The two crossbowmen took aim, and Kier yelled in mock alarm, raising his hands to his head. The officer stepped closer. Kier’s fingers touched the hilt of the sword behind his head.
“Now!”
he cried, and the blade was in his hand. There were two swift flashes, and the crossbowmen fell with thrown swords piercing their mailed shirts. The officer gave a yell of alarm and drew. Kier’s blade moved with deadly swiftness, and within seconds the man was rolling onto his face on the wet cobblestones.
The fourth Veg had broken for the inside of the tower only to be met by the naked blades of two Vyks. Kier gave a sharp command not to kill him. He signaled Ariane and the remaining Vyk to come across the street.
When they had gathered in the darkness of the archway, Kier put his point to the terrified Vegan’s throat and said, “How many more of you in the guardroom?”
The man shook his head, and Kier pressed the god-metal tip harder into the flesh. “Speak, you loyal soldier,” he said gently.
“Twenty,” the man whispered.
“And the Floridans?”
“Below. In the tel.” The frightened warman tried to move away from the point, but his back was against the stones.
His eyes, huge with fear, rolled toward the helmeted face of the small soldier with the awful Vulk. He shuddered and wished he could make the sign of the Star, but he was afraid to move lest this wild warrior wearing the strange harness cut his throat out.
Kier stepped back, swiftly reversed his weapon, and knocked the man unconscious. “Tie him and gag him. Use his harness.” He laughed shortly. “Some day the Rhad and the Vyks will make up a song about this,” he said.
“And what, then, shall we do with the warlocks who profane the ancient knowledge, Grand Master?”
“First be certain that their enquiries are truly the work of sin. Then you may ask.”
Emeric of Rhada,
The Dialogues,
early Second Stellar Empire
What is the Unholy Trinity? The warlock, the Vulk, and science.
The Vulk Protocols,
authorship unknown,
Interregnal period
Cavour stood at the open window, and the rising wind flared his dark cloak and ruffled his gray-black beard. He could see nothing but the glow of an occasional light from the tower itself against the storm and the rain falling like drops of molten amber.
“They are coming now,” Gret said.
The warlock turned to look across the room at the pale, fragile blind face. There was a sick worry in him, and fear, too, he would admit that. But his mind was restless, and it touched a thousand things and asked a hundred unanswerable questions, for that was the nature of warlocks. This tower, who built it? And when? Was it truly the work of the Dawn Men? Why did it stand through the millennia, like a monstrous spear jammed into the heart of the mound of Tel-Manhat?
He regarded Gret narrowly. Not without liking, for the creature was worthy enough. But what was he? Where did he come from? Had there always been Vulks among men? It seemed so, yet it could not be. Only man and Vulk lived among the stars, and the Vulk clung to man with a devotion that was superhuman, truly so, no matter what the fearful said.
He watched as Gret touched his lyre. The soldiers had not taken it from him. Negligence? Or design? And whose? He turned again to the window and tried to see the hidden earth far below. By the Star, what a treasure house down there, where the soil could be scratched with a dagger point and it would give up mysteries and riddles--coins, machines, carvings, fragments.
The whole history of our race is there,
the warlock thought,
if we could only read it.
He made a wry face at the darkness and amended the thought:
If we could only study it and be allowed to live. Science is sin--the black equation, the heritage of the Dark Time. How many years, centuries? More than a man could count.
He drew his damp robe about him and shivered.