Julian May - The Many-Coloured Land

Amerie searched the faces of these free people, wondering what had inspired this relative handful to defy the exotics. Here were exiles whose dream had come alive again. Was it possible that this small nucleus could grow, even prevail?

“Good friends,” Madame was saying, “we have among us newcomers whom all of you have seen but few as yet have met. It is on their account that we have had to gather here. But we may hope, with their help, to reach our precious goal that much sooner.” She paused and looked about the company. There was no sound except the snap and sizzle of the firelogs. “As we eat, I will ask these new arrivals to tell us how they came from the prison of Castle Gateway to this free place.” Turning to the remnant of Group Green, she asked, “Who will be your speaker?”

“Who else?” Richard said, pointing the ladle at Claude.

The old man rose to his feet. He spoke for nearly a quarter of an hour without interruption until his narrative reached the point where Felice was about to initiate the attack upon Epone. Then there was a loud hiss. Amerie’s little cat sprang from her arms and struck a stiff pose, facing the door of the Tree like a miniature puma at bay.

“It is Peo,” said Madame.

Ten people, all heavily armed with bows and blades, came stamping and dripping into the shelter. They were led by a gigantic middle-aged man nearly as massive as Stein who wore the shell ornaments and fringed deerskin clothing of a Native American. Claude held off continuing his tale until these people were served with food and given a place close to the big fire. Then the paleontologist resumed and told the story to the end. He sat down and Madame handed him a cup of hot wine.

Nobody spoke until the gray-haired Native American said, “And it was iron, iron that killed the Lady Epone?”

“Nothing but,” Richard declared. “She was chewed to pieces and I let her have a couple of good ones with the bronze sword, but she still just about nailed me. Then something made me try Felice’s little dagger.”

The red man turned to the girl and demanded, “Give it to me.”

“And who the hell do you think you are?” she said coolly.

He roared with laughter and the sound of it boomed in the hollow trunk of the Tree as in an empty cathedral “I’m Peopeo Moxmox Burke, last chief of the Wallawalla tribe and former justice of the Washington State Supreme Court. I’m also the one-time leader of this gang of paskudnyaks and its present Sergeant at Arms and Warlord in Chief. Now may I please examine your dagger?”

He smiled at Felice and held out a great hand. She smacked the golden scabbard into it smartly. Burke drew out the leaf-shaped little blade and held it up in the firelight.

“Stainless steel alloy with an eversharp edge,” the girl said. “A common toy on Acadie, useful for picking teeth, cutting sandwiches, pricking out transponders from rustled cattle, and putting out the lights of casual assaulters.”

“It seems quite ordinary except for the gold of the hilt,” Burke said.

“Amerie has a theory about it,” Claude said. “Tell him, child.”

Burke listened thoughtfully as the nun set forth her hypothesis on the possible deadly effect of iron on torc-bearing exotics, then murmured, “It could be. The iron disrupting the life-force almost like a neural poison.”

“I wonder…” Felice began, staring at Madame with an innocent expression.

The old woman went to Chief Burke and took the knife from him. As the assembled crowd gasped, she held it to her own throat below the golden neck-ring and pricked the skin. A pearl-sized drop of dark blood appeared. She handed the dagger back to Burke.

“It seems,” Felice said gently, “that Madame is made of sterner stuff than the Tanu.”

“Sans doute,” was the old woman’s dry reply.

Burke mused over the small blade. “It’s incredible that we never thought to try iron against them. But vitredur and bronze weapons were so easily available. And we never tumbled to the reasons why they confiscated steel items back at the Castle… Khalid Khan!”

One of the crowd, a gaunt man with burning eyes, a scraggly beard, and an immaculate white turban, got to his feet. “I can smelt iron as readily as copper, Peo. All you have to do is furnish the ore. The religious prohibition that the Tanu put on ironwork among their human subjects simply led us to carry on with copper and bronze out of sheer inertia.”

“Who knows where iron ore might be found?” Madame asked of the company. There was silence until Claude said, “I might help you there. We old fossil hunters know a little geology, too. About a hundred kloms northwest of here, down the Moselle River, should be an accessible deposit. Even primitive men worked it. It’ll be near the site of the future city of Nancy.”

Khalid Khan said, “We’d have to do the refining work up there. Arrowheads would be best to begin with. Some lance tips. A few smaller blades.”

“There’s another experiment you might try,” Amerie said, “once you have a strong iron chisel.”

“What’s that, Sister?” asked the turbaned metalsmith.

“Try removing gray torcs with it.”

“By damn!” exclaimed Peopeo Moxmox Burke.

“Iron might short out the linkage between the brains of the torc wearers and the slave-circuitry,” the nun went on. “We must find some way of freeing those people!”

One of Burke’s fighters, a hefty fellow puffing a meerschaum, said, “To be sure. But what about those who don’t wish to be freed? Perhaps you don’t realize, Sister, that a good many humans are quite content in their filthy symbiosis with the exotics. The soldiers, especially. How many of them are sadistic misfits, delighting in the rules given them by the Tanu?”

Madame Guderian said, “It is true, what Uwe Guldenzopf says. And even among those of goodwill, even among the bare-necks, there are many who are happy in bondage. It is because of them that the expiation of my guilt cannot be a simple matter.”

“Now don’t start that again, Madame.” Burke was firm. “Your plan, as it stands, is a good one. With the addition of iron weapons, we can shtup it forward that much faster. By the time we’ve located the Ship’s Grave, we’ll have enough of an armory to give the scheme a reasonable chance of success.”

“I’m not going to wait weeks or months for you people to hatch your plot,” Felice declared. “If my dirk killed one Tanu, it can kill others.” She held out her hand to Burke. “Give it back.”

“They’d get you, Felice,” the Native American said. They’re expecting you. Do you think all of the Tanu are as weak as Epone? She was small fry, fairly powerful as coercers go, but her redact function wasn’t worth much or she’d have smelled you out back at the Castle, even without using the mind-assay machine. The leaders among the Tanu can detect people like you in the same way that they detect Firvulag. You’re going to have to keep out of the way until you get your golden torc.”

She exploded. “And when will that be, dammit?”

Madame said, “When we manage to obtain one for you. Or when the Firvulag choose to give you one.”

The girl replied with a volley of obscenities. Claude went up to her, took her by the shoulders, and sat her down on the soft wood-dust of the floor. “Now that’s enough of that.” Turning to Burke and Madame Guderian, he said, “Both of you have referred to a plan of action that you seem to expect us to participate in. Let’s hear it.”

Madame uttered a deep sigh. “Very well. First, you must know what we are up against. The Tanu seem to be invulnerable, immortal, but they are not. They can be killed by Firvulag brainstorms, the weaker ones, and even a powerful coercer-redactor may be over-whelmed if many Firvulag all project together or if one of their great heroes, such as Pallol or Sharn-Mes, chooses to fight.”