The Witling

Seven

The afternoon was spent renging about the palace. No room was more than one league from any other, so that even though the palace stretched eight hundred miles north and south of the equator and thirty miles east and west of the royal meridian, they could visit any place within it in two or three jumps. The hours passed and the shadows lengthened. Through the long windows of the game room, Pelio could already see the colors of sunset in the west.

He looked across the gaming table. Ionina sat hunched forward, concentrating on the silver balls Pelio had just set rolling on the table. She seemed to sense his attention and looked up. “Is there anything more you’d like to see after we finish this match, Ionina?”

The girl sat up abruptly, all thought of the game forgotten. Her lips parted but she remained silent for several seconds, thinking. On the terrace below them, several other games were making noisy progress. Finally: “Yes. When Ajao and I were … got by the soldiers, they took many things that were there with us. Could I see these things? They are just poor things without use, but I feel happy to see them.”

You’re lying, thought Pelio. He remembered those fragments the troopers recovered. They were strange, like weird jewelry. If he had been superstitious he would have called them talismans. He looked back into her mysterious eyes—but I’d like to play along with you. This could be an especially good chance to find out more about Ionina’s background. And even if there were some kind of magic attached to those objects, it shouldn’t hurt for her to see them. The only problem was that he had secreted them in his personal cache in the palace Keep. Pelio looked over the railing at the nobles on the terrace below. The crowd had been growing during the last hour. Judging from the shadows outside, and the formal clothes those people wore, the reception was over, its participants dispersed: it should be possible to enter the Keep without having to talk to too many people.

“I think we can do as you ask, Ionina—if you describe to me the function of these things you had with you.”

The girl bowed her head a fraction of an inch, didn’t look him quite in the eye. “As far as may be, I will.”

They had to make several intermediate jumps to accommodate themselves to the thinning air, before they finally emerged into the gray chill of the Highroom. The room was ten thousand feet above sea level—and the most secure place in the palace, outside of the Keep itself. Down beyond the vertical slit windows a sheer cliff fell away for thousands of feet. Only a Guildsman could teleport himself to the room without first climbing here as a pilgrim. Five centuries before, when Pelio’s ancestors had ruled only the Inner Kingdom, and when that kingdom had been scarcely bigger than a modern duchy, the Guild had been hired to provide the rulers with some retreat reasonably safe from attack. The Guild had senged this niche in the cliff face, and had teleported workers here to carve out the room and the yard-wide stone stairs that led three thousand feet down the cliff. Anyone climbing those stairs was helpless against attack from above, so the early kings had had no trouble excluding unwanted pilgrims. It had taken the kingdom more than a century to pay off the debt the Guild’s service put upon them, but the price was worth it, for the Inner Kingdom then had the most secure redoubt on the continent. Without that redoubt, the dynasty that had culminated in Pelio and that now ruled most of one continent and part of another, would never have survived. In the end, of course, such hidden rooms became a common feature of even minor states, and the means of besieging and seizing them became widely known. That was why in modern times, the Highroom was used merely as the entrance to a much more secure volume—the palace Keep of the Summerkingdom.

The air was cold here; the room was near the equator, but that didn’t offset the effect of altitude. A frigid draft eddied through the narrow wall slits. The room had been carved into four subrooms, altogether large enough to hold several hundred people and substantial provisions. Of course the place hadn’t been used as a redoubt for centuries, and now it stood cavernously empty, silent but for the wind from beyond. Three soldiers, dressed in appropriately heavy clothes, stood near the windows. Pelio glanced at the men, saw that none of them wore a chief attendant’s sash. He walked quickly from the pool, and peered into the other subrooms. Bvepfesh, where was the chief attendant?

Finally he returned to the soldiers. “Where is he?” said Pelio, trying to keep the pique from his voice.

The men snapped to attention. “He?—the chief transit attendant, Your Highness? He was called within.” The fellow paused and Pelio could almost see the thought in his eyes: If you were a proper heir to the crown, you wouldn’t need servants to shuttle you in and out of your own Keep. “He should be back at any moment, however, Your Highness.”

Pelio turned wordlessly away, and drew the girl off to one side of the room. For a moment he just glared at the scene.

“What is the matter?” Ionina asked softly. She stood shivering, her arms folded across her high breasts.

Pelio looked across at her soft brown face, and felt the anger drain from him. “At the moment there is no one here who can reng us into the Keep.”

Ionina frowned. “But you told me … I mean, aren’t you the oldest son of the king? Of all the people, you would know the way?”

Pelio’s jaw dropped. How can she dare to taunt me—Then he realized with an awful shock that she didn’t know he was almost as crippled as she. He lowered his head, and said quietly, “I am like you, Ionina. I can’t teleport; I can’t even kill from a distance.” It was the first time ever that this admission had not caused him pain.

Ionina looked across the room at the soldiers and the two bodyguards; the men were talking casually among themselves. They really seemed quite bored. She absently reached down to pat Samadhom’s wet hulk. “What you said before. You guess right. Where I come from, the all of us are, uh, witlings.”

How casually she spoke the words! He had scarcely believed the assertion when he made it—he’d simplv been voicing his dreams. Now suddenly it was reality. And Ionina and Adgao seemed so civilized; they must control some sorcery, for what except magic could raise a man above the common beasts if he did not first have Talent? He opened his mouth, but his conflicting questions and speculations reduced him to momentary speechlessness. Where was Ionina’s magical land? Could he escape to it?

Water splashed from the transit pool as two newcomers entered the room and bounded to attention; whoever was coming after them must be important. There was another splash, and two more figures emerged. Aleru! Even in the dim light Pelio instantly recognized his younger brother. And the other figure—heavy, ponderous, pale-skinned—that was Thredegar Bre’en. Ever since he could remember, Bre’en had been the second-ranking representative of the Snowking at the palace: ambassadors came and went, but Bre’en always remained. Shozheru and his advisers realized that Thredegar Bre’en was anything but the congenial fool he seemed. The wily Snowman was the one sure link the Summerkingdom had in its communications with the arctic lands. No matter which clique was in power at the poles, Bre’en always seemed to rank high in its councils.

Aleru was talking to the other even before they were out of the water. “And I tell you Bre’en, this is serious. We’re tired of you people supporting this illegal immigration to the Great Desert. The Sandfolk attack on Marecharu Oasis cost us lives.” After them, four men—all dressed in heavy Snow-folk leggings—climbed awkwardly from the pool; these were Bre’en’s personal servants.

It took only those few sentences for Pelio to realize that Aleru was speaking directly for their father, the king. But by tradition, the office of direct spokesman should go to the king’s firstborn son, as soon as that son could be considered responsible. Pelio swallowed hard, and stepped deeper into the shadows, and wished he were invisible.

The motion must have caught Aleru’s eye, for the other’s head snapped around to look directly at them. “Who—Pelio!” The younger prince straightened his shoulders and hailed the elder: “Brother.” Beside him, Bre’en bowed slightly.

Pelio returned the greeting, and tried to look self-composed. Their father had often remarked how similar in appearance and voice he and his brother were. It was true: except for Pelio’s one “tiny” deficiency, they might have been the same person. But that deficiency and the accident of his being born before Aleru meant that they had always been separated by a wall of mutual envy—and hate.

Aleru was one of the few people who knew Pelio well enough to see through his deception.

His brother glanced briefly around the room, and seemed to guess that Pelio was stuck here waiting for the chief attendant. He looked back at Pelio and shrugged as if to say, You pitiful, embarrassed fool. Then his jaw sagged a fraction as he finally noticed Ionina’s slim, dark form in the shadows. He looked at her for a long moment, and Pelio could almost imagine his futile effort to decide where in the world the girl could be from. Even the Snowman, Thredegar Bre’en, seemed interested now—though his gaze was a bit more affable and relaxed than Aleru’s. Pelio tried to outstare them. After all, to explain anything at all about Ionina would imply that there was something special about her. But finally he felt forced to speak. “Do you like her?” he said, trying to smile. “A new concubine. The gift of some baron south of County Tsarang.” The more obscure her origin the better. Tsarang was on the other side of the world, so far from the Summerkingdom proper that its loyalty was scarcely more than lip service. And the lands around it were wild enough to produce a creature as strange as Ionina.

“Very nice, brother. Someday I would have one.”

“Certainly.” Pelio nodded, and the two brothers stared at each other. With Samadhom’s defensive screens hanging invisibly around them, Aleru had no way of senging that Ionina was a widing. But that didn’t help matters much. Aleru knew that Pelio rarely used his statutory harem, that he despised the girls and they despised him. So Aleru might reasonably conclude there was something special about this particular girl. Would his brother guess the one terrible peculiarity that might interest Pelio?

Finally Aleru snapped to attention—an exaggerated gesture of respect—and said, “By your leave, brother.” He turned and walked to the edge of the pool, then noticed that Bre’en had made no move to follow.

“Ah, yes, Your Highness,” Bre’en said to Aleru. “Could we finish our discussion later? Certainly the ambassador should hear what you say firsthand. And I don’t often get the chance to speak with the prince-imperial. If he is someday to rule All Summer, then we of the Poles must know him.”

Aleru pinched in one side of his mouth. “Do whatever you please, Bre’en.” He dived into the pool and disappeared.

For a moment after Aleru’s party left, no one spoke. Behind the Snowman, his servants stood at blank-faced attention. Quite likely, they were witlings; no person with Talent could be as completely intimidated as a witling. It was rumored that the Snowking valued fear and oppression so much that he was systematically breeding a race of witlings to rule over. In the long run such schemes were laughable. In the short run they were ghastly grotesque, even to Pelio.

Bre’en smiled, and leaned forward to gesture Ionina out of the shadows. “I am captivated by Your Highness’s acquisition. She is beautiful—almost supernaturally exotic. Tell me, little one,” he addressed the girl, who was anything but little, “to reach the Summerkingdom from County Tsarang you must have crossed the Snowkingdom. Did our land please you?” For all the man’s ugliness, he had an engaging smile.

The girl seemed puzzled by his question, finally said faintly, “I no … I mean, I don’t know.”

Bre’en’s laugh was cheerful, yet not mocking. “You don’t blow? In just four words my entire kingdom is consigned to obscurity! I am crushed.” He turned to Pelio, and abruptly changed the subject. “Your Highness, it was not by our request that we deal with your father through Prince Aleru rather than yourself.”

Pelio nodded woodenly. Another time, he might have speculated on the Snowman’s motives. As it was, the words scarcely registered.

Bre’en bowed and walked toward the transit pool. His men followed with stiff, almost awkward precision. As soon as they were gone, Pelio started for the pool himself. Ionina caught up and said, “We go to show me those things now?”

The prince shook his head abruptly. “No. Later, it will have to be later.” To his surprise, she seemed more upset by his refusal than by anything else that had happened. His hand came up and he almost patted her shoulder. “Really,” he said in a more kindly tone, “we’ll do it another time. Soon, I promise.” But the promise could be an empty one. If Aleru suspected Ionina was a witling, he might check Pelio’s story; if he looked hard enough, the story would collapse. And that would be the end of them.