Spacebread Read online

  Then the moment came. It was around midnight behind her hut, and she was fighting a cloud of mental fatigue to work on the helmet. Suddenly, she had found the band the butterflies communicated on. It was similar to the mathematical language of moth-folk she had learned as a kitten. Excitedly she tuned her broadcaster to their channels.

  Immediately, the darkness flickered with their arrival. They twittered equations of greeting.

  “∞Σ·Ψ = (Κ’, π’),” she said trying to remember moth grammar. It was a way of saying, “What’s up?” with a quote about atomic patterns.

  “We wait, Lady Spacebread.

  Spacebread said, “(∞3),” which was an expression of bewilderment.

  “We have been waiting for you to contact us. I have met you before. I am Ten-Times-Two, son of Five-Over-Seven. My father flew with you against the Thorians many years ago. He brought you to meet my mother when I was but a pupa.”

  “When I won my sword!” Spacebread exclaimed. “Of course. I had forgotten we had a butterfly with a laser as ship’s ferret. Your father! What do you wait for, then?”

  “For your instructions. I have become tribe leader, and we detect much danger. There is something changing in the earth-force, and we have noticed a change in the Ralphians. We were on our way to the Pole to see for ourselves what it was when we crossed your path. Several of our tribe have already died of the strange magnetic sickness that the air smells of, and I have told the others that you will know what to do. You have a strong magnetic vortex with you, and the Planetary Power is watching you.”

  “Earth-changes afoot, eh?” Spacebread said. “I should have guessed. Basemore must be tampering with the vital forces of the planet itself. I am not sure how we can be of help to each other, Ten-Times-Two, but I will tell you what is happening.”

  Spacebread told him the substance of her story. Owing to her use of the math-language, it could be said in only a few compact and well-chosen phrases.

  “My entire tribe stands ready to help you,” Ten-Times-Two responded. “If the magnetosphere of this planet is tampered with, it may extinct us. We have delicate systems.”

  Ten-Times-Two told her of his people’s legends that hinted of a time millennia ago when the old Wiss folk of the north developed the wisdom and technology to control the telluric currents, the planet’s nervous system, to grow bounteous food at any climate, and to police the continents with earthquakes and eruptions. They ruled the world with the help of the gnordas, now-extinct creatures of the warmer climes. But their wisdom faded, and their own machines destroyed them, ending their civilization in an ice age, the North Pole swallowing their capitol.

  “Perhaps Basemore and the gnorlff are tampering with the old machines at the Pole,” Spacebread muttered.

  Just then she heard the approaching tread of a guard. She hurriedly extracted a promise to talk of a plan the next day with the butterflies, then slunk off to fill out her bedclothes like a proper slave, the communications helmet stashed safely in a hollowed-out corner of the mushroom-dome roof.

  After the guard’s lights swept the hut and the steps passed on down the block, Spacebread rolled to where Sonto and Lucidan lay. In a moment she had awakened them and whispered the news to both.

  “What—the butterflies’” exclaimed Sonto groggily. “Then we must draw plans. I have all of the guards’ schedules figured. If they can truly help us, perhaps we can move at the evening whistle tomorrow, when …”

  Lucidan’s wrinkled hand flickered emphatically before them. Her voice like a rustling wind, whispered around them. “They can truly help you, but not before what I dreamed of happens.”

  “What did you see, Lucidan?” Spacebread queried fearfully.

  “Just now,” came the whispered answer, “it slithered. It is great and longer twice than the soldier steeds. It is brown and scaley. And it is the last one.”

  “What are you saying, woman?” Sonto asked, scanning the milky circuits of the seer’s eyes.

  “Our freedom does not lie in your plans, though you must go ahead with them. It will free us. But we must call its name. Thyfax. Remember the name Thyfax, and we will escape safely.”

  Lucidan continued staring into the same blank space. They turned from her and, putting her murky prophecy aside, began plotting a practical course for their escape to take. Spacebread did not want to put weight on the old woman’s visions; best to trust in their own hands and let the accidents of the future take their own course.

  Their whispers salted the black night air, withering away to feigned sleep silence when the guards patrolled. Only during the predawn hours did they trust their calculations enough to catch up on fatigue numbed sleep.

  THE MORNING LIGHT found them lined up for muster, their eyes swimming with unspent dreams. Spacebread’s communication helmet was beneath her cape, as usual.

  What was unusual was Dzackle’s presence; the Commandant rarely visited the fields or quarry. His slitted eyes scoured Spacebread and Sonto. Did he suspect something? Was his intuition pricked?

  They usually worked apart, in the separate veins at the bottom of the chasm, and their plan was for this setup. But now Spacebread heard a group of engineers discussing a new project, and they were pointing at the two cats.

  “You!” one soldier commanded, “The camp steward tells me you two are the strongest. Follow us.”

  Sonto looked helplessly at her. Their plan was ruined. They would just have to play it by ear. The guards, including an engineer, led them around the rim of the quarry, to an overgrown, mossy hillock scattered with seedlings.

  “This area has to be cleared. We have to determine a fissure point to blast a new vein. We want all the underbrush and earth moved from the bedrock by noon,” one of the guards ordered.

  Spacebread shook her head resignedly and stowed her gear and cape. As they began working on the topsoil and matted plants with picks, she leaned near Sonto’s ear and whispered, “We must delay the attempt until this is done.”

  He nodded in agreement. They had to be within firing range of the guard towers, and this was too far.

  The work, as usual, was backbreaking. Their picks flashed in the growing morning light, their shovels hissed in the warming earth as the sun moved nearer noon. The smaller trees they ripped up by hand. Their fur matted with sweat and earth.

  Toward noon they noticed Dzackle’s silhouette on a promontory just above them, coolly surveying them. The sun sparkled on his armor and boots. Twice the iron butterflies fluttered past them, perhaps searching for a sign. But they could not give it.

  Noon approached. The last uncleared area was the long serpentine ceremonial mound Spacebread had noticed the first time she had seen the quarry. She glanced at Sonto and noted his look of dread.

  “Don’t be concerned,” she said to him as she leaned panting on her pick. “It’s probably just a burial mound with a few trinkets and a prince’s bones. No curse, no harm. Or if there is such, surely it will fall on those who force us to desecrate it.”

  Sonto shook his jet-maned head, saying softly, “I still quake to touch the thing. I’ll draw from your bravery. When we get to a comfortable stop after all this, remind me to toast you for it. Your courage still amazes me.”

  Spacebread grinned. “Speaking of toasts, why don’t I fetch some water while you begin with this.” Sonto nodded enthusiastically as he trudged up the small slope with his pick. She turned back to where the guards lounged, in the shade of a blue-green fir tree. But they did not lounge too obviously, for Dzackle still stood sentinel on the bluff above them.

  Spacebread took a long draught of water and poured a cup for Sonto. Turning to bring it, she saw his pick flash high over the long mound and thud deep into its earth.

  Immediately, the mound shivered. There was no other word to describe it. Sonto, unsure of what happened, dropped his pick. The ground kicked. The tiny trees covering the hill waved. Bewildered, the guards huddled together.

  Then the mound reared up, forcing Sonto to cl
ing on all fours. Like a tall clodded tentacle, the end of the mound snaked into the air. It shook, like a terrier worrying a rat, clumps of sod tumbling away. A brown scaley head blinked open incredible octopus eyes, wide earthy nostrils flared. Sonto cried out and clung tighter to the ground, sure he had awakened the demon of the mound.

  The knoll rose on gnarled brown columns, the earth, trees, and Sonto atop it wallowing from side to side. Now spines, spidered with moss and ferns, elbows choked with stones, tail like a smooth pillar of dust shook free from their natural encumbrances. It was a beast, incredibly long and tall, buried with a score of ancient instruments, now rusted, and Sonto clung desperately to the remaining treelings on its back.

  A bellowing, thunder-like moan shook the canyon before the guards could move.

  “AWAKE! WHO ROUSES ME FROM MY AGES’ REST?” the creature roared, blinking down at the frail monkeys dotting its bedchamber.

  “AWAKE!” it moaned again, a voice like all the mountains splitting.

  “Fire, fools,” a shocked but forceful Dzackle bellowed from his outcropping, just a bare dozen meters from the beast’s barnacled head.

  It jerked to face the speaker but four plasma beams had answered Dzackle’s order, and they sprayed in as many directions from its skull plates. Howling, it spun in a second, and boiling orange flames vomited out its nostrils and across the canyon rim. Where the guards had been, mere puddles of molten armor remained.

  Galvanized, Spacebread had already donned her radio helmet and was clambering with horror-fed energy up the bluff toward Dzackle, her pick gleaming.

  “Sonto!” she screamed. “Remember Lucidan! It’s what she saw. Remember its name! It’s our escape.”

  She dove into a cranny, avoiding a sheet of flame that it exhaled across the bluff. The thing’s wide eyes blinked the sleep of ages away. It had aimed for Dzackle’s abrasive voice, but he had ducked behind a now-glowing rock.

  Sonto pounced to a sitting position astride its immense earthen back, fighting back superstitious fear. Name? Name? So long ago, in the middle of the night … what had the old witch muttered? Thyron? Thickel? The peat beneath him split, ancient rubbery wings unfolded on their steel-shanked webbing like thick clouds of sails. The beast struck the rock aside; immediately the crouching Dzackle fired into its eyes. Pricked, it jerked back in earthquake steps.

  “Now!” Spacebread commanded hysterically into the headset, fumbling with the tuner as she clung to the cliff, “Now, Ten-Times-Two, attack the guard towers! Their faces, their faces, fly into their visors!”

  And she pulled herself up onto the bluff just as Dzackle fired again at the huge serpent’s face.

  Stung again by the modern, unfamiliar weapon, it skipped once more away to see what agency the tiny creature used, and in so doing, toppled off the flinty quarry edge into empty space. Sonto, clinging, knew he was dead, and perhaps that certainty was what shoved the forgotten name onto his tongue.

  “Thyfax! Thyfax!” he screamed.

  And the tumbling leaden shape spread its great black sails of wings and at the last second soared like an airborne mountain above the quarry floor.

  Dzackle spun. Spacebread’s pick smashed his rifle before he could fire, spinning the weapon from his ruined left hand; he growled, wide-eyed, and drew the Thorian sword in time to parry her next blow. The blade sang again the fury of its theft-alert, and tore through the pick handle as if it were butter. It was the first time she had ever faced her own sword. She danced back like a steel ballerina.

  He leaped, swinging; she sidestepped the blow and brought the thick handle remnant down on his helmet, gonglike. The shining blade sang at her sideways. Kicking it deftly aside she desperately jammed the splintered handle up behind his visor, blinding him. She ducked another thrust. Then, grabbing the fallen pick-head, parried a broad chop. Sparks flew.

  The parry sent Dzackle spinning clumsily toward the edge of the cliff. Before he could correct the motion, she heaved the pick. It crashed heavily across his golden chest.

  Dzackle cried out, arms flailing to regain balance, and then, with one bleating groan, fell. The sword cartwheeled out through space. Armor clattered on stone beneath.

  She stood, her white chest heaving. Quietly, she said, “Gramlin, your soul can now sleep soundly.”

  But there was too much afoot to rest. As she sprang down the slope and recovered her sword and belt, the creature’s voice rang out again.

  “AWAKE! WHO CALLS THE NAME OF THYFAX, THE LAST OF THE NOBLE GNORDAS OF RALPH?!”

  And Sonto, black fur tossed, yelled back, “I, Sonto Ghram, slave of the King of Bothwil call you. Turn and destroy the towers of the evil regent who enslaves the men of Ralph!”

  The beast wheeled above the gorge. Moss and earth spun away from its flight, its massive whiskered head turning to look at Sonto. It ignored the glancing beams from the watchtowers.

  “I CARE NOTHING FOR MEN,” the gnorda boomed, “BUT I AM … AWAKE!”

  Thyfax the gnorda, with Sonto hugging its gnarled back, swooped like a delicate craft, its breath leaping out to send wobbling waves of heat across the southernmost tower. It collapsed aflame.

  Spacebread ran through the thin brush like a wild thing, her sword a glittering standard. She arrived in the melee of the camp just as the gnorda streaked past the second guard tower and left it in cinders. Everywhere golden-armored soldiers ran, trying to drive away the swarms of metallic butterflies that clattered about their visors. No one was paying much attention to the slaves, who huddled shivering and glassy-eyed where they had been working.

  Spacebread commandeered a fallen rifle and set fire to another tower, while the wrathful gnorda finished the towers on the farther bank of the quarry.

  It circled high overhead then, its squeaky wing sinews echoing in the sudden silence of the abandoned quarry. Its shadow, like a minor eclipse, fluttered over Spacebread.

  She felt a motion at her side and discovered Lucidan had arrived by some sightless sense.

  “It came,” she lisped. “The shape in the vision was real.” Her white eyes blinked toward the sky.

  “Yes,” Spacebread said, squinting into the sun, “It was real. And it knew the name you saw. But it has Sonto.

  “Then, suddenly, the beast was landing in the camp, sending flimsy walls, buckets, and dust whirling in a typhoon turbulence. Its bared teeth, like an ivory door reared high above Spacebread, and it gazed down upon her.

  “Thyfax,” she said quickly, fearfully, stepping back from its bulk, “how great is the last of the gnordas of Ralph in anger.” She could only hope it would respond with speech instead of flame.

  Its leathery brows wrinkled. “IT KNOWS MY NAME, TOO? I KNOW OF COALY-BLACK SONTO GHRAM, RIDER OF MY BACK, BUT WHAT IS ITS NAME?”

  “Spacebread.”

  Thyfax winked its window-eyes at her, then in a slow arc surveyed the countryside from its high neck. “THE NEW RALPH, EH? THYFAX PREFERRED THE OLD, WHEN THE GNORDA RULED THIS LAND AND THE WISE WISS LORDS RULED THE UPPER COUNTRIES.”

  Lucidan’s hungry fingers found their way to the gnorda’s trunk-like legs, crablike, walked over the warts and bumps and earth still clotting the scaley hide. It eyed her coldly.

  “But it is for the new Ralph you have come.” Her voice conjured syllables upon the wind to reach Thyfax’s stony ears. “You have slept an age in the heart of Ralph. And now you wake. There is much evil brewing in the old land of the Wiss. You must help, Thyfax, for such was the name that dark winds whispered to me, and that name is you.”

  “EVIL, EH? THERE WAS GREAT EVIL IN THE WISS COUNTRY WHEN I LAST SAW DAYLIGHT. THE COLD RETURNED, AND THEN THE WINDS THAT FELLED MY BRETHREN, AND I AT LAST WAS LEFT ALONE. I CURLED UP ONE DAY TO SPELL THE WINTER, AND FOOLISH MEN MADE A MOUND OF ME, THINKING I, TOO, HAD GONE. IT IS A LONG TIME TO SLEEP. AND STILL THE NORTH ABOUNDS IN EVIL MEN? AND YOU WANT ME TO HELP YOU? I AGREE, THE DARK WINDS DO NOT WHISPER SUCH NAMES AS MINE LOOSLEY, SO I WILL SERVE YOU.” The beast then looked sharply at them, as i
f they meant to coerce this mountainside, saying, “BUT I DO IT BECAUSE I WILL IT, AND TO STRETCH MY WINGS. BESIDES THE POLAR STREAM TASTES ODD, AS IT DID IN THE DAYS BEFORE THE WISS FELL, AND I WILL INVESTIGATE.”

  Spacebread saluted Thyfax with her sword, which was silent once more. “Brave gnorda! If you are willing, we will ride along on your northward flight, gratefully.”

  It yawned, groaning, like the splitting of a tree. “OF COURSE I GO NORTH. ABOARD! JOIN SONTO GHRAM THE NAMECALLER UPON MY BACK AND LET’S OFF! THESE WINGS HAVE NOT FELT THE CLOUDS IN A THOUSAND YEARS.”

  As they climbed to its back, the butterflies returned from their battles and joined in a fluttering halo around them. They were only a little thinned in ranks, and they were singed, but triumphant. Spacebread, still wearing the helmet, greeted and congratulated them. Ten-Times-Two twittered equations of success. She told them of the northward flight and invited them along. Swiftly, Ten-Times-Two accepted.

  The sail-like wings unfolded again and beat as the gnorda lumbered off the edge of the quarry … and flew. Spacebread clung to a small tree that had not loosed its roots from the gnorda’s spines.

  Before the land had grown too distant, she guided the gnorda in a low circle back to the forest where they had been captured and slid off its back. There, in the riotous tangle of grass, she found her Foldover bag where it had fallen. She called for Jolita, but the name alone echoed back to her from the forest. Sadly, she strapped the pack on and mounted Thyfax again.

  That done, they rose above the green fields of Ralph, above the smoking quarry ruins. Beams flickering from the plantation failed to harm the creature’s belly plating; Thyfax rose above the clouds and out of sight.