Elder Isles 2: The Green Pearl (20 page)

“Naturally not.”

“Why have you not kept diligent watch?”

“If you please, I cannot properly answer negative questions. There are numberless acts which I have not performed; we could confer here forever while I detailed the deeds I have not done.”

Patiently Shimrod asked: “Did you, then, keep vigilant watch over the workroom?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Why did you not warn me of intruders?”

Facque made another peevish protest: “Must you again and again ask questions presuming non-existent facts?”

“Did you notice intruders, or better: who has during the past two months entered the workroom?”

“You, Murgen, and the female who has been sent here to bemuse and befuddle you.”

“Has the woman come in alone, while I was not present?”

“On several occasions.”

“Did she tamper with my map and my instruments?”

“She stilled the light in place, and interfered with other devices.”

“Did she do anything else?”

“She made marks with a stylus in your Book of Logotypes.”

Shimrod gave a startled exclamation. “Small wonder that my magic has lately been so flat! What more?”

“Nothing of consequence.”

Shimrod removed the immobilizing film from the map; instantly the blue glint, as if to relieve pent pressures, darted in all directions back and forth, hither and yon, finally to settle once again upon the site of Faroli.

Shimrod addressed himself to his instruments, and after some difficulty restored their functions.

Once again he called out to Facque: “Awake!”

“I am awake. I never sleep.”

“Has Tamurello, or anyone else, installed instruments of surveillance, or any other function, here at Trilda?”

“Yes. The woman may fairly be included into that category. Secondly, Tamurello has commissioned me to report upon your activities, and lacking instructions to the contrary, I have obliged him. Thirdly, Tamurello has attempted to use mayflies for purposes of espionage, but without any great success.”

“Facque, I hereby instruct you, definitely and without qualification, to desist from reporting information of any sort to anyone save Murgen or myself: especially and specifically to Tamurello, or to any of his agents or instruments, or to the air at large, on the theory that it might by some means be collected and directed to the attention of Tamurello.”

Facque said: “I am pleased that you have clarified this point. In short, Tamurello is not to receive information of any kind.”

“Exactly so, and this includes both positive and negative information, or the use of coded silences, or the manipulation of any device, or signal, or musical selection from which Tamurello could elicit information. You must neither initiate, nor make response, in any wise whatever, and I include all types and permutations of communication I have overlooked.

“At last I understand your requirements,” said Facque. “All is now in order.”

“Not quite,” said Shimrod. “I must decide how to deal with Melancthe.”

“Spend no great effort in this regard,” advised Facque. “It would be time wasted.”

“How so?”

“You will find that the woman has left the premises.” Shimrod rushed from the workroom, and looked everywhere, but Melancthe was nowhere to be seen, and Shimrod somberly returned to his workroom.

TAMURELLO SELDOM APPEARED in his natural semblance, preferring an exotic guise for a variety of reasons, not the least of the which was sheer caprice.

Today, stepping out on a balcony above the octagonal garden court at Faroli, he was a frail and ascetic youth, somewhat languid, pale as new milk, with a coriolus of orange-red hair, the strands so fine and luminous as to be invisible. A thin nose, thin lips and blazing blue eyes suggested spiritual exaltation, as Tamurello intended.

Tamurello came slowly down a curving sweep of black glass steps to the courtyard. At the foot of the staircase he halted, then came slowly forward and finally, turning his head, chose to take notice of Melancthe, who stood to the side in the shade of a flowering mimosa tree.

The boy-man approached Melancthe, and it was she who seemed the more earthy and dank. She watched him with a still face; his ethereal but definite masculinity was a posture with which she could feel no possible sympathy.

Tamurello, halting, looked her up and down, then raised an indolent finger and turned away. “Come.”

Melancthe followed him into a parlour and seated herself stiffly at the center of a sofa. From her point of view, Tamurello’s guises were little more than clues to his mood. This boy-man puzzled rather than annoyed Melancthe. On the whole she cared not a pin as to how he showed himself, and now she put Tamurello’s peculiar guise and its possible significance to the side of her mind. Other affairs were more important.

Tamurello again looked her up and down. “You seem none the worse for wear.”

“Your tasks have been fulfilled.”

“Even over-fulfilled! Ha hum, be it so! Now it seems that in my turn I must address myself to your concerns.

“As I recall, you are troubled because you cannot mesh yourself comfortably into the ways of the world. This is a legitimate source of dissatisfaction. You therefore want me to make changes in the world or, failing this, in you.” The boy-man’s lips curved in a thin smile, and Melancthe thought that never before had Tamurello affected so acrid a guise.

Melancthe said, simply: “You told me that my mind works at discord to the minds of other persons.”

“So I did. Notably with persons of the masculine gender. This is Desmei’s attempted revenge upon the cosmos, and particularly that segment with external genital organs. What a joke! It is only such innocents as poor Shimrod who must bear the brunt of Desmei’s rage.”

“In that case, remove her curse from my soul.”

The boy-man studied Melancthe with grave attention. He said at last: “I fear that you crave the impossible.”

“But you assured me… ”

The boy-man held up his hand. “In all candor, I lack the skill, nor could Murgen himself do better.”

Melancthe’s beautiful mouth drooped at the comers. “Is not your magic useful in such a case?”

The orange-haired boy-man spoke with vivacity: “It is all very well to ordain tasks by magic, but some intelligent or skillful agency must ultimately do the specified work. In such remedial work as this no entity, be it man, sandestin, halfling, demon, or other creature of controllable power, understands all the intricacies. Therefore, it cannot be done on the instant.”

“Still, this was your undertaking.”

“I stated that I would do my best and so I shall. Listen, and I will describe your problems. Attend me carefully; the subject is dense.”

“I am listening.”

“Each mind is a composite of several phases in super-imposition. The first is aware, and is consciousness. The others are no less active but work for the most part in obscurity and away from the light of knowledgeable attention.

“Each phase uses its own tools. The first, or overt, phase of the mind purports to use the faculties of logic, curiosity, the differentiation of aptness from absurdity, with a corollary known as ‘humour,’ and a certain projective kind of sympathy, known as ‘justice.’

“The second and third and other phases are concerned with emotions, reflexes, and work of the body.

“Your first phase would seem to be deficient. The second phase, the agent of emotional interpretations, with great travail and inconvenience tries to fulfill this function. Here would seem to be the nature of your debility. The remedy is to strengthen the first phase, by a regimen of usage and training.”

Melancthe frowned in puzzlement. “How would I train?”

“Two methods suggest themselves. I can alter your guise to that of an infant and introduce you into a noble family where you can learn by ordinary processes.”

“Would I retain my memory?”

“That is at your option.”

Melancthe pursed her lips. “I do not want to be an infant.”

“Then you must apply yourself to learning, in the fashion of a student: through books and study and discipline, and so you will learn to think with logic, rather than to brood in terms of emotion.”

Melancthe muttered: “It would seem a horror of tedium. To study, to pore over books, to think, to intellectualize… these are the habits I derided in Shimrod.”

The boy-man surveyed her with no great interest. “Make your decision.”

“If I were forced to study from books, I would learn nothing and go mad in the bargain. Can you not collect a sufficiency of wisdom and experience and humour and sympathy into a node and imprint it upon the empty place in my brain?”

“No!” The boy-man responded so sharply that Melancthe wondered if he told all the truth he knew. “Make your decision!”

“I will return to Ys, and consider.”

Tamurello instantly spoke a set of syllables, as if he had been waiting for nothing more. Melancthe was whirled aloft and carried high through clouds and dazzling sunlight. She glimpsed the ocean and the horizon and then felt the soft sand of the beach under her feet.

Melancthe dropped to sit in the warm sand, with arms clasped around her knees. To the south the armies of King Aillas had departed; the beach lay empty all the way to the estuary. She watched the play of the waves. Surging and churning the surf advanced upon her in a gush of white foam

Melancthe sat an hour, then, rising to her feet, she shook the sand from her clothes and entered her quiet villa.

Cftopter 7

KING AILLAS HAD MOVED THE HEADQUARTERS of his army to Doun Darric, a ruined village on the river Malheu, only three miles south of Sir Helwig’s castle Stronson, in the very heart of South Ulfland. Doun Darric had been one of the first South Ulf villages to be despoiled by the Ska, and only tumbles of stone and rubble marked the sites of the old cottages.

The advantages of Doun Darric as army headquarters were many. The troops no longer enjoyed access to the taverns along the docks at Ys; there were no quarrels with men of the town, and the maidens of Ys were again free to visit the market without a surfeit of attention from gallant young soldiers. Even more important, the troops were close upon the high moors, where the weight of their presence was demonstrable to folk of the area.

Aillas had never dared hope that instant tranquillity, like a soft and healing balm, would settle over the mountains and moors of South Ulfland. Vendetta and clan warfare were intrinsic to the Ulfish soul. The king might issue proclamations by the dozen, but unless he cowed, bribed or otherwise persuaded the barons to preserve his laws, the land must remain wild.

The barons of the western slopes and the lower moors for the most part supported Aillas; they were intimately acquainted with the Ska. Their counterparts of the higher regions, in some cases little better than bandit chieftains, were not only the most jealous of their independence but were also the most rancorous proponents of the conduct which Aillas had vowed to obliterate. With the army at Doun Darric, the royal threats had suddenly taken on real import.

Almost immediately Aillas decided to make Doun Darric a permanent base. From everywhere across the land came masons and carpenters, to build suitable appurtenances. Meanwhile, old Doun Darric began to be resurrected: first, in temporary style, by the workmen themselves, and then to a plan more or less casually drawn up by Sir Tristano, as one evening he exercised his fancy over a bottle of wine. He ordained a market square alongside the river with shops and inns around the periphery, broad streets with sewers after the Troice system, and cottages of good quality, each with its own garden. Aillas, taking note of Sir Tristano’s sketches, saw every reason why they should be realized, including augmentation of the royal prestige.

Aillas disliked Oaldes, the ramshackle and generally slovenly seat of the former Kings, and Ys was unthinkable as the capital of South Ulfland. Aillas therefore decreed Doun Darric his capital, and Sir Tristano added to his plans a small if gracious royal residence overlooking the river Malheu on one side and the square on the other. Sir Tristano now thought even farther into the future, and set aside a tract across the river for the construction of more pretentious residences by a newly prosperous upper class, which might choose to make their homes in the new town. The builders: carpenters, masons, plasterers, roofers, glaziers, painters and paint-mixers, timber-cutters and quarrymen… all rejoiced to hear the news; their own prosperity was assured for the foreseeable future.

The lands in the neighborhood of Doun Darric for the most part had reverted to the wild. Aillas set aside large tracts for eventual distribution to his veterans, in accordance with his promises. Other areas Sir Maloof sold at low and long-term prices to those landless persons who would restore the land to cultivation.

Such tangible evidences of permanency tended to support the authority of the king, who no longer could be labelled a foreign adventurer, intent on wringing South Ulfland dry of what little wealth remained to it. Each day brought new platoons of both volunteers and conscripts to Doun Darric from every part of the land, and from North Ulfland as well: strong young men of great gallantry, many of noble lineage who saw in the army their only hope for glory and advancement. These newcomers were uniformly taut with pride and courage, and often displayed the concomitant qualities of obstinacy and truculence. They conducted their lives by a pair of standard rules: first, one must be constantly prepared to fight; second, in combat, there was no gracious defeat; the loser surrendered, fled or died, each outcome equally hateful.

Aillas had learned a few of the intricacies and interactions of the highland feuds. Plainly, many of his new troops would find themselves working in consort with their old enemies, which would seem an invitation to blood-letting. On the other hand, to reckon upon the animosities and to segregate hostile factions seemed to Aillas the worst of all solutions, since it would give the feuds official recognition. The new recruits were notified only that ancient quarrels had no place in the king’s army, and must be forgotten, after which the topic received no more attention, and the soldiers were billeted without reference to their past. Typically, the erstwhile enemies, now wearing the same uniforms, after a brief period of jutting jaws, curled lips, and sidelong glances, accommodated themselves to circumstances for lack of practical alternative.