Julian May - The Many-Coloured Land

In the late evening of the sixth day after they had departed from Castle Gateway they arrived. The high peninsula of Aven stretched away into the west, green and rolling, with a single peak near its tip and other eminences half-hidden in haze. A team of helladotheria in glowing trappings of rainbow fabric pulled the boat up a long rollered way while chaliko-riders dressed in gauzy robes and glass armor, bearing lights, animal-headed horns and banners, followed along the steep towpath. The welcoming Tanu sang all the way to the blazing city high above the salt. Their song had a haunting melody that seemed strangely familiar to Bryan; but those human beings who wore the torc were able to understand the alien words:

The giant sequoia had endured for 10,000 years. Standing amidst a grove of lesser specimens high in the Vosges, it was hollowed by ancient wildfire and rot. In millennia past lightning had sheared its top, so that the Tree was only about 100 meters in height; the trunk nearest the ground spanned fully a fourth of that distance, giving the sequoia the appearance of a huge truncated pylon. That it lived at all was evidenced only by sparse branches writhing at the broken crown, their small needles seemingly incapable of photosynthesizing enough sugar to nourish such a monument.

The sequoia was host to a family of fire-backed eagles and several million carpenter ants. Since early in the afternoon it had also harbored a band of freeliving humans who were accustomed to use the great hollow trunk as a safe-house in times of particular danger.

A thin rain fell. In another hour it would be dark. A woman in a water-stained doeskin cloak stood beside one buttress of the great bole, her eyes shut, her fingertips pressed to her throat. After five minutes had passed, she opened her eyes and wiped some of the moisture from her forehead. Stooping, she pulled aside the fronds of a large fern and entered an inconspicuous opening, a nearly healed fissure that led into the interior of the Tree.

Someone helped her out of the sodden cloak. She nodded her thanks. All around the inner perimeter of the trunk small fires burned on low stone platforms, their smoke plumes plaiting together with that of a larger central blaze and rising toward the natural chimney high above. The main fire was laid on a great X-shaped hearth. Its flames towered at the center and diminished to a comfortable cooking height at the ends of the arms. People were gathered around the central fire in great numbers; smaller groups huddled near the subsidiary fireplaces. The place smelt of steaming clothing spread before the flames, of baking ash-bread and pots of hot spiced wine, and of simmering meat stew.

Richard hovered over the stew kettle, snarling at the cooks and occasionally adding dried herbs from a collection of crocks at his feet. Claude and Felice sat together nearby, and Amerie was using her good arm to lay out medical supplies on a clean blanket. The nun’s tiny wildcat watched with keen interest, having learned quickly that the drug doses, dressings, and instruments were not playthings or prey.

Angélique Guderian came to this side of the fire and extended her hands to the warmth. She said to Amerie, “It’s a good thing, ma Soeur, that Fitharn and the other Firvulag were able to retrieve your pack. We are always short of medical supplies, and we will have great need of your secular skills as well as your spiritual ones. There are no professional healers among us, since all such persons are subjected to the bondage of the gray torc as soon as their expertise is discovered. We can only presume that your own torcless state is the result of a Tanu error.”

“And there’s no escape for the gray-torcs, once they’re collared?”

“They may escape, certainly. But should a wearer of either the gray or silver torc come within the sphere of influence of a coercive Tanu, the human will be compelled to serve the exotic, even to giving up his life. This is why there can be no torc wearers among us.”

“Except yourself,” said Felice softly. “But those who wear gold are free, aren’t they?”

Claude was whittling a new rosary for Amerie, his vitredur knife gleaming like sapphire in the firelight. He asked, “Can’t the torcs be cut off?”

“Not while the person lives,” Madame replied. “We have tried, of course. It is not that the metal is so durable, but rather that the torc somehow becomes bonded to the life-force of the wearer. This bonding is accomplished after the torc has been worn for an hour or so. Once a person has adapted, to unfasten or sunder the device brings death in convulsions. The mortal agony is similar to that inflicted by certain perverted redactors among the Tanu.”

Felice leaned closer to the fire. She had finally taken off her armor after the thirty-six-hour forced march to the Tree, and the wet cloth of her green dress clung to her slight body. Her legs and upper arms, where they had not been protected by gauntlets and greaves, were a mass of scratches and deep bruises. News that the Tanu Hunt had invaded the Vosges sent Madame and her scouting party, together with the remnant of Group Green, fleeing toward the Tree refuge, where they had been met by other human renegades.

Felice tried hard to be casual. “So there is no way that you can remove your own torc, Madame?”

The old woman gazed at the girl athlete for a long moment. At last she said, “You must not allow yourself, to fall into temptation, my child. This golden torc remains a part of me until my death.”

Felice gave a light laugh. “There’s no need for you to be afraid of me. Just look into my mind and see.”

“I cannot read your mind, Felice. You know that. I am no redactor, and your strong latencies shield you. But many years at the auberge gave me an insight into the personalities of others such as yourself. And limited though my own meta-functions may be, I am in the confidence of the Firvulag… and they read you like a child’s primer.”

“So that’s it,” Felice remarked obscurely. “I felt something.”

“The Firvulag have watched you almost from the beginning,” the old woman said. “They always follow the caravans, the Little People, hoping for some contretemps that will put the travelers into their power. So they beheld you on the shore of the Lac de Bresse in your bid for freedom. They even aided you, did you realize that?, by adding images of confusion to the minds of the chalikos and the soldiers, so that you and your friends were able to triumph. Ah, the Firvulag were impressed by you, Felice! They saw your potential. But they also feared you, and quite rightly. And so Fitharn, wisest among those who were following, caused a vivid illusion to seize the mind of one of your confreres…”