The points at stake in the contest were sufficient to return the overall advantage to the Little People if Medor should win-and he had been an odds-on favourite over Kuhal because of the latter"s status as a precariously healed invalid. Now, however, Medor faced not a convalescent but one who had been the premier metapsychic warrior of his race before retiring to voluntary exile.
The smoke from the central pyre changed. Blue and green smoke gushed up together with the clouds of rose-red and black.
The two heroes entered the field. Medor was armed in plates of jet studded with orange diamonds and wicked topaz spikes.
Minanonn wore a magnificent panoply embodying his triple coercive, creative and psychokinetic metafunctions. The triskelion was chased in gold upon his ma.s.sive cuira.s.s and a goldenwinged dolphin crowned his helm. The Firvulag champion and the Tanu took up positions on opposite sides of the surging bonfire. Howler officials handed each contender one end of a stout chain of pyrostatic gla.s.s, which pa.s.sed through the centre of the flaming fountain and the incandescent iron hedgehogs that lurked at its heart. Then the Marshal signalled, the crowd howled, and the finale in the Manifestations of Power began.
In the Tanu grandstand, the two of them watched with unseeing eyes and minds distracted.
She said: It was thus between Lawrence and me.
He said: This is the way it was with me and Cyndia.
They agreed: Such perfect soul-consonance may surely be achieved but once and any attempt at reprise is doomed to futility.
If this is true even among the small-minded how much more invidious an effort between the grandmasterly. And thrice hopeless when both are proud and untrustful.
Exerting both metapsychic power and physical strength, Minanonn and Medor hauled at each other. At first their pull on the chain was steady. The Firvulag hero found himself dragged closer and closer to the inferno and the two bristling contraptions of blazing blood-metal within it. The Tanu and the humans in the audience whooped in antic.i.p.ation of a quick victory. But guileful Medor suddenly let himself be yanked wholly into the flames. The crowd shrieked. Minanonn had to shift balance in order to regain purchase lost when the chain fell unexpectedly slack.
Medor gave a mighty leap backwards at the same time that his mind slickened the sand with ectoplasmic ichor. The Tanu hero staggered and slid. His own creativity strove to cancel the manifestation of his rival. Medor hauled back with savage, abrupt jerks, intent on preventing Minanonn from regaining a fair grip on the slithering chain. (If the Heretic let it slip out of hand, the match was lost.) Inexorably, the former Tanu Battlemaster was drawn into the fountain of fire. Now his metapsychic strength was divided between shielding his body from the terrible heat and pulling back before Medor managed to bring him up against the white-hot spikes of poisonous iron.
The two humans never noticed.
She said: We lived and loved in Unity. We worked hard formed the strong young minds laid secure foundations for mature function. It was so good. He fulfilled me.
He said: I sp.a.w.ned the inhuman thousands and steered the great scheme and she seemed to relate in loving concurrence. And for love of her I begat the Children of her body and sowed the seed of love"s death.
They agreed: Such memories form an insuperable rampart between us.
Minanonn flattened the flames. He clutched the tag-end of the gla.s.s chain and gave a herculean wrench. Medor was pulled off his feet. The Heretic grasped the chain more securely and let the fire rise up around him, as it also did around his antagonist. Medor uttered a farspoken howl, which was echoed by his countrymen in the stand. Both heroes were totally engulfed, but it was Minanonn who stood firm and the Firvulag who was hauled closer and closer to the glowing metal points.
The man and woman were oblivious.
She said: We feared even amid happiness knowing that life would not be worth living if we were separated. Surely a loving G.o.d would know this and take us together. We trusted. In the crash I lost my metafaculties and the Unity. He was killed. I died the worse death.
He said: In the very act of love she betrayed me. Murdering Mental Man she wept and said she did it for love of me and all humanity. He is dead in me forever and only the Children can resurrect Him.
They disagreed.
Minanonn, holding the chain fast in preparation for the fatal pull, cried out with mind and voice: "Yield, Medor Battlemaster! Yield or impale yourself on scorching blood-metal, gaining Tana"s peace but the obloquy of the Little People as you deprive them of a great leader."
Medor let the chain slip from his hands.
The flames died. Minanonn stood in discoloured, soot-filthy armour, holding the entire length of gla.s.s chain above his halfmelted helmet crest. The Tanu throng cried his name again and again and gave him a shattering accolade of slonshal.
The two up in the royal enclosure were aware only of themselves.
She said: Your vision that you cling to so obstinately is evil.
This is not merely my judgment or Anatoly"s. After twenty-seven years the consensus of the Galactic Mind was unanimous. If you can"t see that Cyndia was right and you were wrong you"re just what Anatoly called you: arrogant and invincibly ignorant but still wrong wrong wrong.
He said: And what about you? At least my flaw is grand while yours is merely pathetic. You evade responsibility deny commitment out of simple cowardice. You pretend to n.o.ble despair when you are merely whimpering and self-righteous. You condemn my ignorance and arrogance when your own is equally great ... and you say you can never love and you lie lie lie.
She said: What does a heartless monster like you know about love?
He said: Let me look into your mind. Then say you don"t love me.She said: Never! It"s impossible.
He said: Then so is the rehabilitation of the Duat Mind.
They agreed.
"Well, Medor?" bellowed the Firvulag King.
Aides, trainers, and hangers-on fled from the dressing room of the defeated champion as they felt the scourge of Sharn"s wrath. But when he was all alone with his Battlemaster the monarch doffed his robes, helped slather soothing ointment on Medor"s blisters, and sprayed them with a painkilling Milieu medicament that was said to be nearly as efficacious as Tanu Skin.
"I did my best," the woebegone general said. "But I knew I was cooked as soon as Heymdol announced that the Foe were entering the Heretic as a ringer. No one but Pallol One-Eye was in Minnie"s cla.s.s." After a moment, he appended diplomatically, "Except you yourself, of course, High King."
Sharn mouthed curses through clenched teeth. "We"re not out of the woods yet, either. I lodged protests with the stewards; but there"s no valid reason for keeping Minanonn or any other Peace Faction member out of the games, a.s.suming their precious consciences tell them that the Grand Tourney isn"t ritual warfare but just good clean fun. The Heretic"s banishment was a matter of politics. If Aiken wants to accept him on the Tanu team, there"s not a d.a.m.n thing we can do to prevent it."
"Is Minanonn partic.i.p.ating in the tug-of-war metaconcert this afternoon, then?"
"I think it"s a foregone conclusion," said the King. He helped Medor into a fresh suit of padding and new armour. "But cheer up, old son. In the tug, it"s strictly minds, not muscles, that"ll cut the mustard. And there"s still only thirteen thousand of them-and eighty thousand of us."
Both Elizabeth and Marc saw the flagship land on a hastily roped-off area just behind the Tanu grandstand. Not long afterward the King came to the royal enclosure seeking Elizabeth. He was accompanied by Creyn, Basil Wimborne, Peopeo Moxmox Burke, and Brother Anatoly.
"I"m afraid you"ll have to miss the rest of the games, la.s.s,"
Aiken told her. "We"re taking you for a little ride."
She jumped up from her seat. "It"s-it"s ready?"
The King only said, "Come along."
Marc lounged back with an unconcerned smile. He was wearing, with considerable style, the smart plum-and-ochre dress uniform of the King"s Own Elite Guard, complete with golden torc and commander"s insignia. He said, "The time-gate is not yet operative, Elizabeth. The King is merely antic.i.p.ating.
Or possibly thinking wishfully. If the Guderian device were in working order, the entire Many-Coloured Land would know it."
Aiken only repeated darkly, "Come along."
"You"ll hurry back, I hope," Marc said. "Your heroes missed you during the Heroic Manifestations."
"But won all the same," Aiken snapped. "And now we"re leading in the point scoring."
"It wouldn"t do for you to miss the tug-of-war, though. Not even for ... strategic reasons. Your subjects would never stand for it. I"m really looking forward to seeing how your metaconcert technique stacks up against Sharn and Ayfa"s."
"Planning to enter the tussle on the Firvulag side again?"
Aiken inquired sweetly.