The Magick of Camelot Page 20

I report this as a typical Marackian conversation while on the way to battle….

  As the twentieth hour, with great Fomalhaut setting fast behind the range of forested hills to the southwest, we entered Glagmaron City from the east road. We were one hundred Kelbian warriors, at least half again that many merchants, ostlers, pack-men—and ourselves. Glagmaron had changed. Two things especially were more than disturbing. The center of the city, the great square and temple for which we had fought, had been completely destroyed, along with at least ten square blocks of buildings, warehouses, inns and dwelling places. In the enlarged “square of destruction”—and it covered a good twelve acres now—there was nothing but blackened, stone-like lava, from the heat no doubt of the cruising ship’s great laser guns.

  People, watching our passing from semi-ruined buildings, seemed hungry, disorganized, but still fiercely independent. Children played or searched through the ruins for whatever they could find. Some shops were open; guildsmen still practiced their various trades. Inns and hostelries did a thriving business. For Glagmaron City was still the capital of Marack.

  One thing I’d noted, too. Construction was beginning in the destroyed square; a new temple to house the sphere, the house of Diis, the Unseen.

  Sending our goods-laden dottles with the pack animals of the other merchants, and under the care of their ostlers, we proceeded on up the familiar castle road to the great mound of stones that all of us knew so well. Rawl, at my shoulder, could barely contain himself. Tears wet his cheeks.

  The great plateau of the jousting field was barren to the very entry of the first stones of the mighty bridge. In all the time I’d known or frequented Glagmaron Castle there’d not been a day, winter or summer, without some half-dozen pavilions, tents or the like, present for the testing of the skills of this lord or that On a summer day there would easily be as many as a hundred tents, and the field would be green. There was no color now. It was all bare earth, stone, dirt. Alive to wassail and constant tourney to lighten the hearts of the most martial in splendor and deeds, and the most gallant in minstralry and poetry—and most true warriors were proficient in both—our field was a desert now; a graveyard….

  The Alphian ship sat silently, somberly, two or three hundred yards to the south. We eyed it askance, as did the others of our Kelbian troop. For though they now swore allegiance to the sky lords, we’d gathered, in the bit of conversation we’d had with them, that they feared them more than they’d ever feared the Dark One.

  Normally at any facsimile spaceport—which this military field was assuredly not—there were a few servo-mechanisms for loading, off-loading and the like, as well as a spate of ground cars to take passengers and crew wherever they wished to go. Not so with the Alphians and their ship. The Dark One’s “uncle,” as shortsighted as his predecessor, had not provided for such. The Alphians, with no previous experience at anything, were unaware of their loss.

  The incongruity then—to one who had known the complexities of a starship and a thousand ports—was the sight of a dottle pen within a few tens of feet of the skyship.

  We then saw that which fully endorsed the concept of the field as a “graveyard.” At a few feet to the right of the entry to the bridge was the beginning of a double line of sharpened stakes upon which as. many as forty bodies had been impaled! 1 had heard nothing of such an act, nor had Gen-Rondin, Rawl, or any of ours. Still, they had obviously been there for some tune, since most were shrunken, dried by the sun and wind. Scavenger birds sat on collarbones or stake tips. Whitened ribs were exposed where the flesh had been torn away. Skulls were picked clean. Over it all was the sick, sweet, cloying stench of rotting death. We raised our sleeves before our noses as we passed.

  Among the bodies, according to the tattered signs of heraldry remaining, were those of the lords Rekisto of Gleglyn, Gen-Giaos of Feglyn and Per-Kals of Longyen; all with their ladies, knights and squires. I also noted the cabalistic rags of the aged sorcerer Per-Looris. Rawl, Gen-Rondin, Dosh and our three students raged silently, fighting the tears that brimmed their eyes. After a single look, I rode straight onto the bridge and then to the wall gates to turn left along the inner wall.

  Only a few white-tabbed guards had been at the bridge; a handful more were on the walls. Less than a dozen were at the gates of the inner wall, hardly enough to man the great locks and the portcullis. No trumpets sounded at our entry; no kettledrums. All was quiet, silent. The very atmosphere seemed dead.

  Inside, with our dottles stomping the flagstones of the familiar courtyard, we were hit by the first faint smells of a different decay … Having killed a goodly half of the castle help, and frightened off the greater part of the remainder, the new rulers were just now getting things back to some degree of normalcy. Dour ostlers took our dottles. They didn’t want to leave. Indeed, sensing something awry, they wheeed and whoooed dolorously as they were led away to the stables.

  With twilight already setting in, we were taken at once to one of the many, now empty, apartments. Since it was large enough to house the five of us comfortably, I asked that our ostlers stay with us to act as our personal pages at sup. The castle page guides shrugged. They couldn’t have cared less. Indeed, their attitude and general slovenliness made me wonder just who they were responsible to these days. For I’d also noted the colors of poor Dors-Riis, the castle steward under Caronne, as having been one of those on the stakes….

  Our apartment being half way up the southwest tower, we were also in a direct line with the hill of the sphere. I went to the balcony to view it, shifting my contacts to ten mags and to infrared, too, to have a close look in the fast-growing darkness.

  Gen-Rondin, to my rear, declaimed upon the manner of execution of those without the gates. His past as a jurist and interpreter of the king’s law lay heavy on his shoulders.

  “Never,” he said with some heat, “in the written history of this land, has a prisoner of war or a plain criminal been treated thusly. Marackians,” he cried. “Nay! Fregisians of all stripes, though admittedly ferocious in battle, simply have no history of such cruel punishment….”

  My eyes on the sphere, I whistled the others out to join me on the balcony. “‘Tis that I wish to check my eyes against yours,” I exclaimed. “To me that damned blue-bubble seems alive, even, breathing. What do you see?” Actually, the sphere’s activity was more a pulsation, a giving off of heat with a resultant distortion effect, or so I told myself.

  Sir Dosh, the first to speak up, cried, “My lord, you’ve named it exactly. That’s what it’s doing, breathing.” Like the others, he had fantastic eyesight The others agreed, staring hard, as curious as I but for different reasons. In truth, they were not far off the mark, for in previous conversations they’d spoken or referred to the sphere as the “creature,” not viewing it as they did the Alphian ship, as some kind of vehicle, but as a thing in itself. … I glanced across to the skyship. Its sensor pods, fore and aft, were also aglow. I wondered: Were they communicating? Obviously the pods had such a capability, but that was not their purpose. A communications system was much more direct; except that the sphere might be different—mental, perhaps. I studied it some more. No, by the gods! It wasn’t breathing, not even pulsing. The damn thing was actually sort of bouncing up and down, but within just a foot or two of ground-zero.

  The hell with it. It was tomorrow’s problem. In the apartment again, we broke into our various packs to see what raiment our Kelbians had brought to impress the sky lords. My erstwhile priest, I found, had been the recipient of one of the Alphian garments that went with the office. Apparently the robes had been made beforehand. The stuff was silken and of an unknown weave, of a shining azure blue trimmed in white. The dress itself consisted of a jumpsuit, a surplice-like surcoat with flowing sleeves and a brimless kepi for one’s head. The kepi had a precious stone fitted to its center. The legs of the jumpsuit were designed to be shoved into metallic half-boots. … I found the “book,” too; indeed, I took it with me as a measure of my devotion. />
  Since it was already late, I was not surprised when we were almost immediately called to sup.

  Not knowing quite what we’d find, we’d steeled ourselves in more ways than one for our entry. The steel referred to was of the finest mesh. It had also been hardened in the best of Marackian smithies. We wore it beneath the borrowed finery. It would stand us ,in good stead. As a last point before leaving, I snatched up the ponderous new bible and sliced its guts out with my faldirk so’s to make a nesting place for the two weapons captured at the temple, I then placed the “book” in the center of a large pillow and carried it as I would a votive offering.

  It is one thing to come home again in the accepted sense, to family and fireside. It is another to return to a home that is occupied, desecrated and despoiled by strangers, aliens!

  Glagmaron Castle was now my home, our home. My family was Murie, our fireside, the huge, indented stone crypts sunk into the walls on each side of the great hall. Built to hold whole tree trunks, they were banked now because of the heat of summer.

  Though we were the last to arrive, our small section of the Kelbian caravan—a knight, a priest, three merchants and three squires (I’d elevated our students in rank)—earned us a seat but two tables from the still-existing “high tables” of Caronne’s court. These high tables consisted of a line of three placed on a raised section of stone slabs at the hall’s north end. At right and left angles from the high tables, two additional lines of from four to five tables each extended the length of the hall.

  At the height of the summer—holidays, marriages, feast days, tournaments and the like—the lines on either side were doubled so that the great hall could actually seat some six hundred all told, a quarter of whom would be below the proverbial salt.

  On this night, though it was the height of summer, there were fewer than two hundred. And, too, the gathering seemed more a Walpurgis Eve than happy wassail.

  The three high tables were occupied by twenty Alphians, an equal number of lords and knights from the five kingdoms, with their ladies and two priest-sorcerers, one for each of the tables flanking that of the sky lords. The center Alphian table was a sight to see… . Tarkiis, Marquest and the others had evidently taken to the pleasures of the flesh quite rapidly (I’d long forced the pictures of their first sampling of this delicacy from my mind), for there were at least forty of the most beauteous daughters of the erstwhile Court of Marack with them, all in various stages of quasi-nudity, and seeming to be quite happy about it. The overflow from the Alphian table, in terms of girl flesh, wound up at the adjoining tables of lords and ladies. The result was a study in the maintenance of poise in the face of the obliteration of all accepted Fregisian mores.

  The rows of tables at right and left angles to those on the dais were more or less filled with others like ourselves. New visitors from the kingdoms around, or lords from Marack’s countryside, all come to make their peace with the sky lords and to give obeisance to Diis, their new god.

  A small thing but important: Whereas, in the court of King Caronne, those who had come to dine and take their pleasure had occupied both sides of the long tables, now they occupied but one. This, apparently was a better way to see and be seen. It was also a good security measure. As of the moment, and this within the open-ended rectangle between the tables, a trio of sad-eyed young harpists was playing. Their instruments were deliberately muted so as not to interfere with the pleasure of the company. The result lent an oddball balance to the sometimes wild laughter and shrill screams from the high table.

  The decay, I think, was manifest in the care—or lack of it—of the hah itself. A few shields and pikes had fallen here and there and had not been replaced. The discolored blank spots cried for attention. The varied flags and banners now seemed unkempt, faded, though it was difficult to believe that such could happen in so short a time. But the most glaring sign of the absolute contempt of the new rulers for the old, was the great laser burns on walls, ceiling and floors.

  These, I was told, were the result of the playful Alphians shooting wantonly at frightened bats whenever these poor beasts would wander in out of the night-The sky lords thought it great sport. No matter that a number of humanoid casualties were also the result; no matter the searing of aged polished wood or the burning of this thousand-year-old tapestry or that….

  Normally, as an Adjuster, I would be acutely alert to the reactions of the newly invited merchants, etc., as well as to those who’d by now become acclimated to the modus vivendi of their guardian angels. Now, except for an on-the-spot evaluation and an automatically pigeonholed analysis, I lent most of my efforts to checking the hall for our own purposes; the prime one being the rescue of Murie and Caroween.

  Neither had made an appearance, and if they failed to show altogether it would be, as Hooli had quaintly put it, “a whole .new kettle of fish.”

  The heavier and older of the two priests then made a lengthy speech on the potential wonders of Diis, which few listened to, and the meal began. We ate, talked and socialized. Those at the high table, the Alphian-table that is, talked only to each other and socialized only with the girls; their socializing being the kind that one would find in any cathouse from Terra to Assine II.

  As the meal tapered off and the effects of the wines, sviss and beer grew, the fat priest would arise from time to time to introduce the name of this visiting lord, priest or merchant, and that worthy, in turn, would arise, go to stand before the Alphians, bow obsequiously, say a neat little piece and retire to his table. Seldom if ever did the Alphians say anything in reply.

  Studying this quite gauche phenomenon in how not to win friends and influence people, or creatures, I devised a quick and simple paragraph of greeting and obeisance for when it came my turn, which we could all agree to use, and upon which we could elaborate if necessary.

  The occasional shriek from the girls, the constant chatter and murmuring from all other areas became a sort of in thing with each group. I wondered at it, but took advantage too. In this way our closeness to each other was not considered suspect From time to time new guests came, others ‘left. The new arrivals from the city below disclosed drenched furs and cloaks. The audible deep rumblings from without had brought a natural rain again.

  Sir Rawl, being our Kelbian knight, Sir Rettish, was called , first. He went dutifully and soberly to stand before the Alphians while his status and background were described. I’d clicked my contacts to six mags, the better to observe Tarkiis while this went on. The Alphian overlord hardly listened, at least not to the priest’s description of Rawl. His ear was rather cocked to a series of ooohs, aaahs, and titters from one of three silken couches placed to the rear of the high tables. On this particular couch an Alphian had stripped a girl of her quite diaphanous shift and was engaged in an act of frenzied copulation in full view of all. Tarkiis seemed only amused by the sounds he heard… . Rawl, watching bug-eyed, failed completely to respond when it came his turn to speak and had to be reminded.

  Gen-Rondin was next, as our chief merchant, Dos-Dreglan. By the time his brochure had been read, there were three naked pairs, all coupling on the couches. When prompted, Gen-Rondin woodenly spoke his piece and retired. … I could not help but note that those who had left the hall so far seemed to have been from the two flanking high tables on the dais. Both were mostly empty now so that only the Alphians and their girls remained.

  When it was my turn the cries from the girls on the couches, plus accompanying shouts from the quite uninhibited Alphians—and they had no reason to be otherwise, considering—fairly drowned my introduction. The fat priest ended it simultaneously with the climatic fulfillment of the copulators. They were, for the moment, exhausted and their moans tapered off. Since their performance had been the central attraction, a vacuum-like silence ensued.

  I took advantage of this to bow to the priest and to the overlord, Tarkiis. I then said my words of greeting.

  Finished, I waited the few seconds of protocol lest there were questions
from any source. Tarkiis, also aware of the vacuum, was finally prompted to say something.

  “Why, priest,” he asked disinterestedly, “do you have red eyes when all the rest have blue?”

  A good question. I hadn’t the slightest idea. So I improvised. “My lord,” I said, “before I became a priest of our new and gracious god, Diis, I was first a warlock. Warlocks, the better to work their magick, make use of the tistle-weed. Tis smoked, inhaled into the lungs. This results in dreams and freedom from all worry. With this weed, my lord, we feel no restraints, no ties—no nothing! The price we pay for this pleasure is that the weed makes our eyes red.”

  He thought about that, then said, “We of the Kentii have no restraints; and this without your weed. Still our eyes remain blue. But we, of course, are superior to you. What magick did you work, Warlock?”

  I hesitated. He apparently now knew the word but not its meaning. “Small things,” I told him. “Our work in no way compares to yours.”

  He accepted my compliment contemptuously, as I'd known he would. He said sneering, “Show us one of your tricks.”

  I bowed, pressed my belt stud for the ionizing effect, careful to widen the beam but still keep it directional for focusing. I then pointed at the nearest table where sat a large metal tureen—and the tureen glowed. I doused the beam, turned, pointed to another tureen. And of course nothing happened. I shrugged in deprecation of my own abilities.