Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 20

It was all right.

Later, as he sat on the balcony drinking mead and watching the owls, Olone came. She was as tall as a young tree, with blonde hair floating loose in the sea breeze, and she sent tentative coercive emanations stealing into his mind, feather-touching the erotic triggers.

"No," he told her.

"I'm sorry, my King." She was wearing a translucent gown without a sash that fell from her shoulders like silvery water. "I only thought to help you in your need."

"And what else?" he inquired softly. His own coercive-redactive probe went into her so subtly that she was without suspicion, intent on her artless manoeuvreing.

"I wanted to tell you how glad I am. That you won. That both of the traitors are dead-and Tonn with them! I am yours forever if you want m e."

Aiken laughed very gently.

She stood proud before him, one hand resting on her abdomen. "And I have conceived your child."

"So have sixty-seven other Tanu women. I'm the King."

"I thought you'd be pleased!" she cried.

He sipped his drink, gaze veiled, mind inspecting her proud young ego. "I know what you thought, Oly. What you think.

When I believed that Mercy was dead, when I was drained and weakened after the fight with Felice, you gave me great comfort and helped heal me. I'm grateful for that, and I'm happy that you carry one of my sons. But don't ever think you can manipulate Me, Coercive Sister."

Frantic mental walls crashed into place. She backed toward the balcony door. "My King, forgive me-"

"Poor Oly. Your ambition is a futile one, and mortally dangerous. I've had enough of queens for now."

"I-I was foolish and presumptuous. Don't hurt me!"

He was rea.s.suring. "Not if you accept that I've changed."

She hesitated. Her fear dissipated and her aspect softened as she realized that he was not angry but amused, and sad. "Shall I leave Goriah, then?"

"Of course not. And just because we don't share a bed, don't think that I've lost my fondness for you. You're a marvellous randy Tanu la.s.s, and we'll share sweet houghmagandy anon.

But not now. You can give us a wee kiss, though!"

She burst out laughing and flew to him, and kissed him first with caution and then with full pa.s.sion. And he held her lightly as she surrendered to ecstatic relief, and her mind confessed, and he forgave. Later, she sat on the floor at his feet and said, "Is it true? That you've swallowed the minds of Nodonn and the Queen in the manner of the legendary heroes of our lost.

Duat world? And if you bedded me now, with the conquering fire still investing your mind, then I'd be taken, too?"

He tried to explain. "Elizabeth says that what I did-and you must believe that it was done without my conscious volition-was to subsume the metapsychic attributes of Mercy and Nodonn. I know nothing about your Duat legends. I certainly didn't eat two people alive, and I didn't drain their souls and imprison them inside my head-"

"-even though you were afraid that you had," Olone whispered.

"Dear Oly. You're n.o.body's fool. Is my royal indisposition the talk of the castle?"

"We know that you do not sleep. That you are deeply troubled."

"Don't you think I have reason to be? You know how the Firvulag have broken the peace accords."

"Will there be war?" She had both hands clenched tightly against her belly.

"If there's a war, I'll win it."

Her eagerness was desperate. "Has-has the subsumption made you very strong, then? So strong that Sharn and Ayfa will not dare to come against us?"

Had it? Would the stolen powers be his to use?

Aye, there was the rub! Not yet, that was certain. The subsumption had been an appalling trauma; he had not dared to reveal the full extent of his dysfunction to anyone except Elizabeth. Only she knew that he was able to perform only the simplest metapsychic operations with reliable competence-that he was barely able to fly, that he could not begin to generate the psychokinetic power needed to lift his 400 mounted Hunt knights, that he could no longer conjure up mighty bolts of mental energy or create a laser-deflecting mindscreen. The new powers he had taken over from Nodonn and Mercy were there inside him, crowding and disrupting his own metafunctions. But he was unable to energize them efficiently. The existing neural pathways were inadequate. He would have to form new ones capable of bearing the increased load, just as he had modified other aspects of his cortical operation after the Felice affair, incorporating the metaconcert program and the novel techniques for aggression vouchsafed him by Abaddon. That had taken time. So would the fullness of the subsumption-if he did not go mad in the process, as Elizabeth had warned he might. In the meantime, he would have to bluff and stall and cajole and bamboozle. And hold fast to the Milieu armaments and seize those ancient flying machines that Basil Wimborne and his crew had hidden away in the Alps"I will never reveal your secret, my King. Rely on me."

"What?"

Lost in his reverie, he had forgotten Olone and her question, secure (he thought) behind the mental defences that still retained most of their old effectiveness. But she had risen and stood now before him, respiring compa.s.sion.

'"I will never tell."

She had guessed. Sensitive and anxious for their unborn child, clever and self-serving and fearful and thoroughly in love with him, Olone knew.

"Aiken, it's all right. You'll find a way. You must. You're our King."

"Yes," he said desolately, and leaned back in the chair, and closed his eyes and his mind, and waited until she went away.

Still later, he paced along the parapet, moving from block to block of the castle, up the towers and across the flying bridges and in and out of the partially repaired bastions-dark now, with the periodic lights-out in effect. He greeted the night watch as he prowled, and they rea.s.sured him that all was well. With the inner demons coming alive in the predawn hours, he went up into the great broken spire where the beacon had shone, where he and Mercy had watched the meteors, in order to check the rebuilding job. The workers had reached the penultimate landing and would be topping off within another day or two.

He stood on the new floor of dusty gla.s.s blocks with the wind whipping his silk robe and humming through the narrow embrasures. A large chunk of the western wall was still out and he had a stunning view over the Strait of Redon.

What was he up to these days?

Had he set sail yet?

"And can I fa.r.s.ense you?" Aiken inquired softly. He could mindspeak well enough over several hundred kilometres, and this morning he had viewed the devastation of Bardelask quite clearly. Fa.r.s.ensing, unlike the "muscle" metafaculties, was more a matter of adroitness than strength. It even had its own auxiliary neural circuitry integrating it with the physical senses, and this was much less vulnerable than the faculties that functioned holographically.

Why not give it a shot? It was night, the optimal time for a long-distance effort, and he sure as h.e.l.l knew the mental signature!

He would simply observe. Not attempt communication.

Leaning against the half-finished wall, he put his head into an embrasure that would provide the proper inclination. Then he relaxed, let his mental vision range out, following the curvature of Pliocene Earth, skimming lightly over the un.o.btrusive Atlantic waters on wide beam. Lightly ... lightly ... diffused and soft, minimally powered, skating above incipient pain ... range ... range ... range.

Ha. North America.

Now, very charily, close her up. Narrow the beam. Sweep southward along the teeming lagoons of Georgia, cross Apalachee Channel, and find Ocala Island. See its dots of human lifeaura. And the one ...

Pain.

But concentrate the beam anyhow, scanning the south end of the island and the big bay that Cloud Remillard had said was s.h.i.+elded from the worst of the hurricane winds by the scattered atolls of the Still-Vexed Bermoothes. There they would moor the boat.

Severe pain.