The Witling

Three

The Bodgaru terminus of the Royal Road had been carefully prepared for the prince-imperial’s arrival. Except for an army escort boat, which had arrived minutes before, the lake was free of traffic. All along the water’s edge, the season’s first ice had been chipped away and the stonework polished. Many ninedays before, the prefect had imported an ornamental jade garden and “planted” it along the wharf side of the lake. The life-sized stone trees and shrubs were adorned with hundreds of flowers carved from yellow and blue topaz. That morning the townsmen had dusted every trace of snow from the jade garden, so that now it sparkled with sterile grace.

The townspeople stood all along the wharf. Every man, woman, and child held tiny replicas of the imperial tricolor, issued them by the prefect’s men. Their talk was cheerful and unrestrained. Though their attendance was required, most waited eagerly: The visit of a member of the royal-imperial family was a rare event. No one realized this more clearly, more agonizingly, than the prefect himself. Parapfu Moragha stood at stiff attention, between the garrison band and his jade garden.

Though the sun hung at noon in the deep blue sky, the wind blowing across the lake was chilling, and the snow-covered, pine-covered hills that rose above the lake made it seem a frigid blue puddle caught at the edge of winter.

Suddenly the quiet surface of the lake was no longer empty. The royal yacht popped into existence, slamming down and eastward through the water. The white hull almost disappeared beneath the surface, then bobbed back up, its timbers creaking. Two-foot waves rippled back and forth across the lake, splashed icy water along the wharf. Even before the yacht had stopped rocking, its crew ran out the imperial tricolor: the yellow sun in a sky of blue over a field of green. The band on the shore struck up a cheery welcome as the road boat edged toward shore.

On the yacht’s private deck, Pelio-nge-Shozheru, prince-imperial of All Summer, undid his safety harness and got up to walk to the railing. Though taller than the average Azhiri, Pelio wasn’t much more than a boy. He wore a green-and-blue kilt with his rank woven across the waist, but even without the costume, his wide nose and green eyes would have at least identified him as one of the nobility. One would never guess that the prince was a witling, so devoid of Talent that his kenging could scarcely kill a sandmite.

A warm summer breeze, renged from the southern hemisphere—as far south of the equator as Bodgaru was north—blew softly across the deck to warm Pelio’s back and insulate him from the local chill. The servants who cast those breezes sat below decks, as did the lords and ladies accompanying him. The prince stood alone, or as alone as he could ever be: only his bodyguards and his watchbear were with him on the deck. That was more protection than the average noble felt obliged to keep—but Pelio was a witling, and without his guards’ constant attention, the lowliest peasant could scramble his innards.

Pelio looked across the water at the cheering crowds and the garrison band. I wonder if they are laughing inside, he thought, while they cheer with their mouths. That a witling should one day be king-imperial was indeed a great joke. No doubt several of the rustics in that crowd owned unfortunates possessing more Talent than he. That was the normal fate of witlings. They were defenseless against every teleportive jape of normal people. A witling was treated as a chattel—unless, of course, he was born into the royal family, unless he was heir apparent to an empire. Pelio’s eyes stung with the old shame as he looked past the hundreds of townspeople waving their little tricolors: how wonderful his birth must have seemed to the Summerkingdom! For years his father had been childless, the dynasty imperiled—and then at last, at the very end of his father’s middle age, a fertile consort had been found. Pelio often imagined how his father must have suffered as it became apparant that his son was not superior, not normal, not even retarded—that his son would never display more than the smallest bit of Talent. And to top tragedy with insult, just one year later, Pelio’s mother, Consort Queen Virizhiana, gave birth to Aleru. But for a matter of dates, Prince Aleru would be first in line—and Aleru was perfectly normal, with more than average Talent.

Naturally, Pelio’s position in the royal court was an embarrassment. King Shozheru lacked the harshness of will to execute his firstborn—and such execution was the only accepted method of clearing the line of succession for the secondborn. It was not surprising that the closest things Pelio had to friends at court were the obsequious intriguers who lied to and flattered him; the closest thing to respect, the honest hatred of his brother and his mother.

Every few seasons, protocol dictated that Pelio take his yacht and visit some corner of the kingdom. Often such tours exposed him to less skillfully disguised derision than he faced at the Summerpalace, but at least the faces were different. Besides, the Summerkingdom was such a vast and beautiful place, it almost made him forget himself and his weaknesses. And sometimes the trips were not as tame as the royal advisers would like. Perhaps this would be one of those times. The strange message he had received that morning was anonymous, yet explicit: there had been a skirmish at Bodgaru with monsters or Snowfolk…

The troopers ashore gathered in the tow ropes and pulled the barge toward the timbers that cushioned the wharf. The prefect and the garrison band were almost directly below him now. He smiled slightly as he saw Moragha start. The prefect must have felt the warm wind blowing off the yacht.

The boat bounced gently against the timbers and the soldiers made her fast. Pelio saluted the crowd and turned away from the railing. “Here, Samadhom,” he called softly to his watchbear. The sand-colored beast padded over to him and began licking his hand. The prince trusted his watchbear more than any of his guards—and as a passive defense against keng attack, the shaggy animal was probably as effective as any Azhiri, Guildsmen excepted. Pelio patted Samadhom’s head, and then, together with his silent guards, he descended the stairway to the first deck. The lords and ladies who joined them at the second deck were not so quiet, but Pelio did not respond to their eternal, artificial good cheer. With his entourage close behind, he crossed the filigreed iron drop-bridge to the wharf, and walked to where Parapfu Moragha stood at backbreaking attention.

“You may rest, good Parapfu.”

Moragha relaxed with visible relief and signaled the garrison band to sound Rest. Across the wharf, the townsfolk broke the silence they had kept since the Prince set foot on land.

“Your Highness, the people of my prefecture—myself included—welcome your visit with the greatest love and respect.” Moragha’s head bobbed with enthusiasm. The prefect turned and waved Pelio up the inlaid steps that led to the prefectural manse. “There are so many things we have to show Your Royal-Imperial Highness.” Moragha dropped into step just behind Pelio, cutting between the prince and his retinue. “Bodgaru is the northernmost reach of Summer, yet we maintain the spirit of green growing things in our hearts and works.” He waved at the jade garden that stood on both sides of their path. Pelio followed his gesture but did not comment. He saw that the green and yellow stones were cleverly carved, and he could dimly seng that the density patterns of the stonework resembled those of real plants. But there was a touch of gaucherie in imitating life with stone or snow. It was the sort of thing he had seen taken to an abstracted extreme in the Snowking’s crystal palace at the ends of the world. “And,” Moragha rushed on when he got no response, “the mining caves of Bodgaru are the largest in the world. Summerfolk have mined the copper hereabouts for more than a century…

From the rear of the party, servants continued to teleport a warm breeze in from the southern hemisphere. Beside Pelio, the prefect was beginning to sweat in his tooled leather oversuit, but the warm air had less to do with that than the prince’s continued silence. Few flatterers could contend with his stony silence and expressionless gaze. At court, his silence was regarded as a sign of boorishness, stupidity. And in truth, there was arrogance in Pelio’s manner—but there was more distrust and loneliness.

Finally Moragha’s prepared speech ground to a halt. The two walked silently for many paces, until Pelio looked at the other, and said, “Tell me about last night’s skirmish, good Parapfu.” “How did you—” the prefect started, then gargled back his surprise. “There is not a great deal to tell, Your Highness. The affair is still a mystery. My agents detected intruders in the hills to the north. I dispatched troops from the garrison. They encountered a large flying creature, which they destroyed.” “And the intruders?” prodded the boy.

The prefect waved his hand in casual dismissal. “Witl—persons of no account, Your Highness.”

Witlings! So his anonymous informant had written the truth. Imagine witlings fighting normal people. “Snowfolk?” Pelio asked casually, trying to hide his excitement.

“No, Your Highness. At least, I have never seen any Snowmen like them.”

“I will interview them.”

“But Baron-General Ngatheru has expert interrogators at Atsobi…”

You self-contradicting fool, thought Pelio. So you have something really interesting here.

“The strangers have been moved to the garrison?”

“Uh, no, Your Highness, they are in one of the dungeons beneath my manse. The baron-general thought—”

“Fine, Parapfu. Then I will interview these strange prisoners immediately.”

The prefect knew better than to oppose a royal whim, even Pelio’s. “Certainly, Your Highness. It will be most convenient to use the transit pool in my manse.”

By now they had reached the rose-quartz terrace surrounding the prefect’s home. The manse was only five hundred feet from the lake, but it was some fifty feet up the side of the ridge line that protected the Royal Road’s terminus against surveillance from the north. No wonder Moragha had not suggested they teleport to the manse: using a transit pool in weather like this would be a cold and unpleasant business.

Like most buildings in wintry regions, the manse had a doorway carved through its walls. Pelio liked doorways; they gave him some of the mobility other people had naturally. Inside the manse there was too little space for Pelio’s wind rengers to do their job, and the rooms were chill and stale. The pale light filtering through the windows was a good deal less cheerful than what Pelio was used to in the open ballrooms of the Summerpalace. Moragha’s bondsmen circulated among the nobles with drink and candy. The prefect had even managed to import a small group of singers from south of Atsobi. It was a festive scene … of sorts.

Parapfu led the prince and his guards away from the crowd and through a wilted interior garden to the manse’s transit pool, where his servants produced watertight slickers.

“The dungeon is nearly sixteen hundred feet below ground level, Your Highness, so I deem the transit pool the most convenient entrance.”

Pelio nodded, slipped into the slicker. If Moragha were sufficiently skilled, they could jump right from where they were standing. But sixteen hundred feet was a long way down. Once he had been jumped two thousand feet downward—directly, without first submerging in a transit pool. The heat shock had given him a headache that lasted a nineday.

The water in the pool was cold and oily. Pelio was grateful for the watertight suit, even if it was an awkward nuisance.

(It just proved again that the only sensible place for people to live was in the tropics, where winter never came.) In the water around him, Pelio could seng a familiar tension as Moragha prepared to jump. A second passed. The tension “brightened,” then twisted in upon itself as the pool and its contents were exchanged with the destination pool.

They bobbed to the surface, the guards immediately taking positions around the pool. Pelio and Moragha pulled themselves from the water. The air stank, and the rockwort on the walls glowed bright green: the air hadn’t been changed for many hours. The green-lit dungeon was large, and fairly warm—yet it was still nothing more than an empty space carved from abyssal bedrock. Without the constant attention of the keepers who knew its location the cell would quickly become a coffin for its prisoners.

“All right, on your feet,” came Moragha’s sharp voice. His man began kicking at the dark-clothed shapes on the floor. Pelio suppressed a gasp as the first of the strangers stood. The man—creature?—was incredibly tall, well over six feet. But even more grotesque was the spindly thinness of his limbs. The fellow looked as though he would shatter if he ever took a bad fall.

“I said get up. Come to attention. You have been accorded an undeserved honor. Get up!” Moragha aimed a kick at the second creature, who rolled lithely to its feet as if it had been watching them alertly all the while.

To Pelio, the rest of the universe retreated to a position of total irrelevance. He didn’t hear the stifled gasps of the guards. He didn’t notice the silence that stretched on and on.

She was beautiful. The girl stood tall, as tall as Pelio, yet slender as a woods-doe. Even in the dim light her coveralls revealed the strange perfection of her figure. And her face—its beauty was unworldly. Her features were sharp, her nose and chin almost pointed. It was as if the dark, grotesque face of the tall one had been treated by a kinder artist. While the skin of the Snowfolk was chalky white, and Pelio’s was grayish green, her skin was almost black in the rockwort’s light. Her smooth face might have been carved from darkwood. All the childhood fairy tales of woods-elves and dryads came rushing to mind. She was the stuff of dreams.

Pelio spent an unmeasured time lost in the deep, dark eyes that stared from that miraculous face. Finally the spell weakened and he asked faintly, “And she … they are witlings, Parapfu?”

“As I said, Your Highness,” the prefect replied, looking at Pelio strangely.

“Do they speak Azhiri?”

“At least a little.”

Pelio turned back to the girl, and spoke slowly, “What is your name?”

“Yoninne.” Her answer was clear, but with overtones of fear and tension.

“Ionina? A strange name. Where are you come from, Ionina?”

“From—” Her answer was interrupted by an abrupt though unintelligible command from the spindly giant. The girl replied in kind, then turned back to Pelio. “No, I no tell that.” She backed away from them, looking both defiant and brave… And she a witling, thought Pelio.

Then he made his decision, and tried not to think of what might happen when his father heard of it. “Prefect, you have done well to detect and capture these intruders; I commend you. They seem interesting indeed. I will take them with me on my return to the Summerpalace.”

“Your Highness! These are dangerous people. The monsters that accompanied them were so loud that we could hear them even here in Bodgaru.”

Pelio turned on the prefect, and his smile was full of vengeance. “Dangerous, you say, good Parapfu? And they witlings? How could they be dangerous? Did they harm Ngatheru’s troops?”

“No, Your Highness,” admitted Moragha, the barest hint of sullenness creeping into his voice. “In fact, if they had attempted any attack on the troops, they almost certainly would be dead now. But sir, it is not their persons that are so dangerous. Baron-General Ngatheru is convinced that they can explain the monster fragments that were left after the battle.”

“Fine. I will take whatever of those fragments you have. Don’t interrupt. If my cousin Ngatheru is still upset with the situation, let him take it up with me or my father,” he said, praying that Ngatheru would decide to let the matter drop. After all, the baron-general was five tiers below Pelio as formal nobility was counted.

“Yes, Your Highness.” The prefect came briefly to attention as he capitulated.

Pelio took a last look into the dryad’s dark, mysterious eyes, then turned to slip into the transit pool. She is the most beautiful creature …

… And, like me, a witling.