Julian May - The Many-Coloured Land

“I hope Richard will be all right.”

“Don’t worry. I think he’s ready to do his part, if only to show Felice that she’s not the only one with balls.”

The nun laughed. “What a collection we are! Exiles and losers all. We got just what we deserved, running away from our responsibilities. Look at me. A lot of people needed my ministry. But I had to brood and maunder about my own precious spirituality instead of getting on with my job… You know, Claude, most of last night was hell for me. There’s something about riding that hits me in the worst way. And while I was hurting, I found I was shrinking myself. I think I finally understand the reasons why I got into this mess. Not just coming to Exile, the whole thing.”

The old man said nothing. “I think you figured it out, too, Claude. Quite a while ago.”

“Well, yes,” he admitted. “When we talked about your childhood that day on the mountain. But you had to find it out for yourself.”

She said softly, “The firstborn daughter with the Little Mama thing in the warm Italianate family. The hard-working professional parents depending on her to help raise the cute little brothers. She loving to do it, power-tripping on the responsibility. Then the family gets ready to emigrate to a new world. Exciting! But the daughter screws up by straining some muscles and then breaking her leg in a fall.

“…But just one short week in the tank, dear, and you can come out to us on the next ship. Hurry and get well, Annamaria. We’re going to need your help more than ever on Multnomah, big girl!

“And you hurried. But by the time you were well they were all dead, killed in a translational malfunction of their star-ship. So what could you do but atone? Try through all the years to show them you were sorry that you had not died along with them. Dedicate yourself to easing the passing of others as you were not able to ease theirs…

“But fighting it at the same time, Claude. I realize that now. I wasn’t really a morbid person and I was glad to be alive and not dead. But that old guilt never let me go, even though it was so well sublimated in my vocation that I didn’t realize how it was undermining me. I went along for years doing work that was very hard and refusing to take holidays or sabbaticals the way the others did. There was always a case that needed my special help and I was always strong enough to give it. But in the end it all became a sham. The demons weren’t exorcized any more. The emotional fatigue of the job and the buried guilt all mingled and became unbearable.”

The old man’s voice was compassionate. “So when the contemplative orders justifiably turned you down, you scratched around and found what looked like an even better form of atonement… Can’t you see that you haven’t loved yourself enough, Amerie? This hermitage-in-Exile idea was the ultimate chair in a corner facing the wall.”

Her head was averted from him so that the broad-brimmed hat hid her face. She said, “So the Exile anchoress turns out to be just as much of a fraud as the ministering nun in the hospice for the dying.”

“That last bit isn’t true!” Claude snapped. “Gen didn’t think so and neither did I. And neither did the hundreds of other suffering people you helped. For God’s sake, Amerie, try to keep a perspective! Every human being has deep motives as well as superficial ones. But the motivation doesn’t invalidate the objective good we do.”

“You want me to get on with my life and quit picking scabs. But, Claude, I can’t go back now, even though I know the choice was wrong. I have nothing left.”

“If you’ve got any faith remaining at all, why not believe that you’re here for a reason?”

She gave him a crooked smile. “It’s an interesting idea. Suppose I spend the rest of the night meditating on it.”

“Good girl. I have a feeling you won’t have much time for meditation later on, if Felice’s plan works out… I tell you what. You meditate and I’ll snooze, and we’ll both do ourselves good. Wake me as soon as Basil starts playing the signal. It’ll be just before dawn.”

“When it’s darkest,” sighed the nun. “Go to sleep, Claude. Pleasant dreams.”

There were no more double beacons, which seemed to have been the scouting party’s warning of Firvulag in the vicinity. The caravan had come down from the plateau now and traversed open wooded slopes cut by little brooks that foamed whitely over boulders, calling for tricky footwork by the chalikos as they picked their way along in the starshine. The country became rougher and there was a tang of conifer resin in the air. As the night wore on, a breeze sprang up, ruffling the lake and making the beacon fires near the shore lean and twist. It was very quiet. Aside from the noise of the moving caravan, only owl hoots were to be heard. There were no lights of villages or farms, no sign of habitation at all. So much the better if they did manage to escape…

They came to a deep gorge lit on both sides by bonfires, where a lonely guard post secured a suspension bridge over a cascading stream. Three torch-bearing men in bronze armor stood at attention as Epone and Captal Waldemar crossed the swaying structure. Then the soldiers led small groups of prisoners over, bracketed by amphicyons.

When they resumed their march, Richard told Felice, “It’s after four. We been losing time fording the creeks.”

“We’ll have to wait until we get far enough away from that damn guard post. I hadn’t planned on that. There are more than three soldiers manning it, count on that. Epone will be able to send them a telepathic call for help and we’ve got to be sure they’ll get to us too late. I want to wait another half hour at least.”

“Don’t cut it too fine, sweets. What if there’s another post? And what about the scouts ahead who light the beacons?”

“Oh, shut up! I’m juggling factors until I’m dizzy trying to optimize this thing. Just be sure you’re ready… Did you lash it firmly to your lower arm?”

“Just like you said.”

Felice called out, “Basil.”

“Righto.”

“Would you play some lullaby tunes for a while?”

The notes of the woodwind rose softly, soothing the riders after the brief anxiety caused by the bridge-crossing. The double file of chalikos and their flanking bear-dogs now moved among titanic black conifer trunks. The trail was soft with millennia of needle duff, muffling their passage and sending even the most uncomfortable riders into a doze. The track rose gradually until it was more than a hundred meters above the Lac de Bresse, with occasional sheer drops to the water on the caravan’s right. Too soon, it seemed to Felice, the eastern sky began to lighten.

She sighed and pulled down her hoplite helmet, then leaned forward in the saddle. “Basil. Now.”

The Alpine climber played “All Through the Night.”

When he finished it and began again, four amphicyons went charging soundlessly to the head of the procession and hamstrung Epone’s chaliko with simultaneous slashes of their teeth. The exotic woman’s mount uttered a heart-stopping shriek as it went down in a welter of dark bodies. The bear-dogs, with barking roars, leaped upon Epone herself. Soldiers and the front ranks of prisoners gave shouts of horror, but the Tanu slave-mistress did not cry out.

Richard thumped his free feet against his mount’s neck and held tightly to the reins as the creature took off. He galloped into the midst of the quartet of soldiers trying to come to the assistance of Epone. Waldemar was shouting, “Use your lances, not the bows! Lift them off her, you stupid bastards!”

Richard’s chaliko reared and crashed down upon the captal, knocking him from the saddle. A figure in white robes and a black veil leapt down as if to help the fallen officer. In the moment that Waldemar took to gasp astonishment at seeing a mustache on a nun’s face, Richard slipped Felice’s little dirk from its golden scabbard and pressed the steel blade home twice below the two corners of Waldemar’s jaw, just above the gray metal necklet. His carotid arteries severed, the captal clutched at the false nun with a bubbling cry, gave a peculiar smile, and died.