Spacebread Read online

  The figlet blinked. A hill of ice shards slid from the mountainous cave-in, burying the last of Dezorn’s twitching pods under a white cascade.

  Activity sounded far off, but Klimmit BarKloof was fatigued and too much in battle shock to respond to it. It sounded like the clash of armies, and a great voice was crying above the general din. He whispered down, leaning against the wall, gazing at his dagger with mingled horror and pride. He broke into exhausted tears.

  Then, amid the sobs, his own voice picked up the beat of a distant song. He lifted his small head, clutching his wounded shoulder, and sang the Sanguakkoid Warrior chant of the firstborn, at first with a wavering voice, and then with the fullness of his being.

  SPACEBREAD SCREAMED. Sonto slid from her grasp, and she fired like a wild woman at the console. Basemore ducked her blasts, hunting for the chance to catch her gaze.

  “Look into my eyes!” he hissed.

  She could only scream inarticulately, feeling the hot pain of unwept tears in her eyes. But she could not attack him. To do that she would have to look at him. She rolled behind the boxes and collected her thoughts. Gunfire still sounded sporadically outside.

  The buckle! She could still stop Basemore’s plan. She held the pistol steadily in both hands and fired it at the metal ring housing the stone. Basemore cried out and tried desperately to meet her gaze. The lens coupling sheared through in one, two, then three places. The lens tumbled like a glittering meteor, bounced off a silver bar, and tangled in a web of rubber tubing just over the pit. Pipes began exploding on the sides of the shaft. A technician gibbered in fear.

  She now fired at Basemore. She could not make a run for her buckle, however, for she would have to run past him, and that would be deadly. Unless one of them made a foolish move, they were stalemated. The orchestra, minus a few musicians who lay tumbled in their instruments as casualties of the fray, played on woodenly. From outside the palace came shouting and scattered gunfire. From within, somewhere, she could hear the sound of the figlet pursuing Dezorn down dark frozen catacombs.

  “Your have lost, Spacebread!” Basemore sneered, struggling to look at her eyes. “Even if you get your crystal, my troops will soon be here.”

  “You are the loser,” she replied, squeezing off a shot. “You will always be the loser, no matter how successful you think you are. You cannot possess joy, as you think you have possessed this music! You do not have the music in your power, only the bodies of musicians. You will always lose.”

  The silence was thick with the truth.

  Suddenly, dreamlike, a cowled figure appeared in a doorway, groping its way around the edge. Feet felt their way down the steps to the hall floor. Hands stroked the air as if they played an invisible harp.

  “Lucidan!” Spacebread cried.

  She had blindly fumbled her way down the icy tunnel toward the warmth, following her own vague feeling that she should be there.

  Basemore gnashed his teeth as he vainly sent his deadly vision streaming into her dark cowl.

  Her hands stroked the air. “Burning ice. A blue light, twisting to my right,” she said in words like a flurry of ice-bats.

  Suddenly Spacebread caught on. “The lens, Lucidan! You see the master lens in your night. It is suspended in a tangle of tubes about thirty meters from you,” she directed tensely. “But beware. It hangs above a pit.”

  “Look into my eyes!” howled Basemore.

  Lucidan complied, the fur cowl slipping down from her face. His malevolent orange stare played innocently over the milk-white membranes of her eyes. Basemore strangled a gasp.

  As in a dream, she walked hesitantly, picking her way among battle debris, Spacebread firing to keep Basemore from rushing.

  “There, Lucidan, left!” Spacebread called out.

  “Yes, I feel it like a burning icicle in the Vortex,” Lucidan whispered.

  Her hands fluttered through the air and stroked the tubing. The crystal belt buckle dangled over the abyss. Her deft hands soon found it nestled coldly there, like an egg. She plucked it reverently and held it in front of her. It made cool swirls in the night sea of her vision.

  “Here, Lucidan,” Spacebread said, forcing herself to calmness. “Throw it to me, where my voice is.”

  Basemore howled again as she started forward with the lens. But midway in her path her foot caught Colden’s outstretched arm, and she fell headlong. The lens clattered across the floor, skidding before the console.

  Spacebread pounced through the air for it, turning her head to protect her eyes. At the same time Basemore made his move, snatching up Colden’s sword from the floor and lunging for the lens. Spacebread landed on it, her claws securely around it, but a blow from Basemore’s sword sent her gun spinning across the floor. A second thrust only tore through her cape, for she had sprung away from him with the prize, drawing her sword again.

  She ran in the only direction open to her—up the dais to the curling tower steps. Basemore leaped after her. Lucidan’s blind hands caught his purple cloak and pulled him back until he slashed through the fabric and continued pursuing the white cat up the stairs.

  Spacebread bounded up the icy staircase, with Basemore just a short way behind. The only sounds besides their puffing and their clacking boots were the discordant strains of half a petrified orchestra, and the firing outside. Spacebread turned and thrust with her eyes averted, striking out of peripheral vision; and Basemore easily parried and counter-struck. But she was gone, like a white streak, up the spiraling shaft. Moonlight fluttered on her cape, double shadows spread beneath her. The basilisk hissed and surged after her.

  She turned, feinted to the left, then whipped her sword under his guard; but his saber turned quickly, deflecting the blow. She covered her eyes and dove further up the stairs, slashing wildly.

  “You will lose!” the basilisk huffed. “You have nowhere to go.”

  He was right. The tower above opened only on dark sky and Ralph’s twin moons.

  Suddenly she dropped to her hands and kicked out powerfully with one boot. It caught Basemore on the shoulder and spun him violently into the wall. He stumbled and fell, but simultaneously brought his blade down, skewering through her boot and leg. She winced, kicking away from him. She pulled her bleeding leg up after her, gritting her teeth.

  “Ha! Now I have you,” he growled. “Wounded to boot.” He laughed his lizard laugh at the poor joke.

  She limped the remaining steps two at the time, then threw herself across the crystal platform at the tower top and braced her back against its wall for the final assault. She held her jeweled buckle tightly to her.

  The parapet was donut-shaped, the stairs mounting from the central hole, and now Basemore’s head bobbed to her level. She avoided his eyes, watching his flashing sword. He attacked, she ducked his pass and thumped him hard under his arm with her elbow. Spinning, she caught his second slash and threw it back, barely escaping his eyes.

  They fought in the icy night air, their breath fogging before them. Spacebread was the better sworder, but she could not watch her foe.

  Then, an explosion jolted them. They faltered, both. Another explosion rocked the palace to its ancient foundations. Sheets of fire scintillated through the prismatic walls of the tower, blue and red, icy green and orange. Lucidan’s last prophecy was happening; a house of ice was burning. Spacebread felt a wave of surprise rise in her, then suppressed it with the new confidence that she fought not alone. It was as though the Power of Ralph fought beside her. There was tumult far below, around the palace where the sound was of throngs contending.

  Basemore glanced around in shock. A deep and incredibly loud voice rang beneath them, and Spacebread’s eyes widened in recognition. She turned to Basemore, but averted her vision in time. His eyes flashed venomous hatred.

  THE NORTHERN WIND WAS COLD. His whiskers were iced with it, and it ripped around his wings like a brutal rushing wall. The Bay of Krath glistened beneath him, its surface dotted with warcraft. He had not been to Wiss-
Ko since the beforetime, with his grandfathers when they counseled with the Wiss. But that was beforetime, when things were as they should be. He shook his massive shoulders. Good. They were rested now, and nearly healed from the soldiers’ blasts.

  Prince Thyfax, the last gnorda on Ralph, swooped to lower altitude and headed for Krath. He chuckled thunderous chuckles to himself. None of the creatures had been able to follow him into the sea to refuge. They had forgotten that gnordas were originally from the sea. He had slept a brief, refreshing day or two in a grotto and was now better than before.

  Lower, he swooped lower, then braked himself with a mammoth back beating of his wings. He could see them, the ants beneath, scurrying down antways in the damaged city. Rays leaped up to bounce off his thick hide. His sharp eyes saw the clusters of Wiss-Koth turn to look at him.

  “FREE PEOPLE OF WISS! HEARKEN! I AM THYFAX, SON OF THYLLEN. WHERE ARE YOUR SWORDS? YOUR WEAPONS? HAVE I RETURNED FROM A PAST WHERE THE WISS RULED THEIR OWN LANDS TO FIND A MUDDLED RACE OF SHEEP? RISE! RISE UP AND HELP ME BURN THIS BRUTAL FOE. WAKE UP AND RECALL THE NAME OF YOUR RACE! AWAKE, AS I HAVE DONE!”

  Then he plummeted in a deep, screaming arc. Fire licked out and engulfed a platoon of running soldiers.

  On the upswing, he called out again, “AWAKE! UNYOKE YOURSELVES FROM THIS BITTER SLAVERY YOUR FOREFATHERS COULD NOT BEAR TO TASTE! FIGHT!”

  And, as he dipped and surged over their heads, the Wiss-Koth did fight. Some bubble popped inside them. Perhaps it was the vision of their long-extinct ally routing those who had so easily vanquished them, but whatever, blue hands snatched weapons up. Rakes, pitchforks, sickles. Hoes, family heirloom swords, ancient guns. Museum pieces fired at pursuing soldiers. No longer could they afford the illusion that their ancestors had some special magic that kept them free. Now, whatever magic there was was with them.

  “TO THE PALACE.” Thyfax’s voice exploded. “TO THE PALACE NOW. CHASE THE VERMIN INTO THE SNOW THAT TOOK YOUR FOREBEARS. EARN YOUR NAME AGAIN.”

  And he swung low over the white fields, where farmers were attacking their keepers, urging them to follow him northward, ever to the north where something tampered with the Pole.

  SPACEBREAD FOUGHT A LOSING BATTLE, not daring to look directly at her adversary. Though there was now blood on Basemore’s tunic to answer that on her boot, she was losing.

  He pressed her, attacking constantly from the right so she must use her lame leg; she stumbled, ever backwards around the crystal circle, leaning away from the blood-sloshed boot as much as she could. He snapped his saber down, sparks glinted away from their clashed blades. She thrust, he parried. But he was panting, almost wheezing, and one arm hung limp. His eyes blazed.

  Once more the wild wind that was Thyfax whistled around the castle; more fire licked out across the troops now reaching the palace ramparts. They were fleeing. The free people of Wiss-Ko, free once more, raced after the army of the false regent in every type of domestic conveyance. Their shouts were small on the wind at the top of the tower.

  Basemore slashed out savagely, then thrust. Spacebread stumbled back, but caught herself. Her leg was weakening.

  “Who loses now, Basemore?” she puffed. “You cannot stop all of them together.”

  She swung to parry his answer with steel, but the force of his blow staggered her, and she held the heavy buckle and setting out to steady her.

  Basemore knocked her sword aside suddenly. His face glared, the deadly orange glow splayed across her. “Look, damn you!”

  Instinctively, she swung the crystal between them, between their only-inches-close faces. Orange light fragmented, split, and whirled in a bright vortex to the center of the stone, then flashed back in the direction from which it had come.

  A sword clattered.

  Basemore snapped back with a startled, malignant gasp. Through the gem, a hundred Basemores stared in shock at a sight they had never beheld: Basemore’s own sight, springing back to him. He had looked into his own reflected gaze.

  His gray form froze, crouched over her. All the color drained from it, and it toppled across her, then spun down the shaft of the tower, crashing through the old Wiss machinery and disappearing in the black pit beneath. From some dark pit below there came a smash.

  Spacebread sagged, closing her weary eyes and collapsing across the parapet. The brass setting in her hand was warm where she had grasped it. She pulled it to her over the tiles. It was hers again.

  The gnorda wheeled in fiery circuits around the tower, spouting flame on the troops beneath, who were also being crushed by the swarming Wiss-Koth. They were defeated in the snow.

  From the general cacophony, Spacebread soon detected a familiar noise. A hum was coming closer. The figlet popped up through the central shaft.

  “Spacebread! Are you all right? Lucidan said … Where is the basilisk?”

  She leaned on one elbow and shook suddenly with laughter. He was still a volcano of questions. But she quickly sobered, pointing to the pit far beneath with her sword.

  “He fell.”

  “You have the buckle,” he said, settling on the crystal roof beside her. “It’s over. Have you heard the noise outside? A strange flying creature is destroying the troops. The Wiss-Koth are uprising.”

  She nodded numbly. Then the figlet saw the grief in her eyes and remembered the violet eyes of Sonto.

  They stared at each other pensively, exhausted.

  The figlet sighed. “We have both lost something today.”

  He waited for her to ask, but she didn’t.

  “I have lost my childhood, and you have lost a love.” He sheathed his dagger. “And of the two, I think you are the winner. My childhood is gone forever. But you will find another love. And you have your buckle back.”

  Slowly, Spacebread turned from him and wept.

  [11]

  Into the Stars

  THE SOUNDS OUTSIDE their room were trivial. Footsteps, padded with silks and furs as befitted royalty, passed softly. Somewhere there was lute playing (by real musicians). And from outside the regent’s palace came the under murmur of a huge crowd. Through the window, the spires of Black-Black were visible, studded with clinging dots of color that were people straining for a look inside the palace.

  Spacebread examined herself in the mirror and adjusted her broad silk cravat once more. Then she had to reorient the scarlet sash that crossed her chest, which then hung at an angle incompatible with the new jeweled scabbard for her sword. She sighed and turned to the figlet.

  “Do I look all right? I’m deadly nervous.”

  He looked up from his own primping before a similar but smaller mirror. “Of course you look all right, milady. Who could fault you?”

  He chuckled. “You fear being presented to the people you have freed more than you did freeing them.”

  Spacebread looked sharply at him. “You know I was only after my buckle. Saving the planet was incidental.”

  The figlet chuckled again, pulling at his blue lapels. “Still, these clothes are a pretty token of your incidental actions. I thought the fitter’s eyes were going to boggle out of his head when Gallwort ordered him to outfit me.”

  Spacebread smiled. Then a faraway look crept into her eyes. “I wish Sonto could be here with us. After all, he was on the king’s business.”

  “Yes,” said the figlet softly. “But we have our future to think of.”

  “We?” She half-smiled quizzically.

  He pretended indignation. “I am still your slave. I have the papers. Somewhere.”

  She sat down on the bench next to him, arranging her flowing cape so as not to wrinkle it.

  “Klimmit,” she said soberly, “it’s time I had a talk with you about this ‘adventure’ we’ve been on.

  “I want you to know how important you have been to me, as a friend and as a fellow conspirator. But my future, despite King Gallwort, is unsure. The Power has to be reckoned with. I broke my oath to it, and I will have to pay the price it names.”

 
“But surely …” Klimmit began.

  “No, listen. When you become as old as I and put a little wisdom on the bare bones of your young soul, you will understand. I made an agreement with the Planetary Power, and I tried to live within it. However, sometimes, in very unusual circumstances, a person must go, against all authority, on her own course, no matter how wise or important that authority may be. Those times are rare, and one must keep a close touch on one’s personhood so as not to end a fool. But always, you must know, that there is a reckoning to all decisions. If I have made the right decision, nothing else will matter.”

  “But what can the Power do to you?” he asked, fear prickling his skin.

  “Directly, little. But it can communicate with the Powers of the Home Worlds and forbid me ever to visit a civilized world. It may banish me, forever or for a short time, from anyplace that has an awakened Power. That would be a kind of slavery.

  “But you must know what I am up against, before you prematurely throw in your lot with mine.”

  A knock at the door interrupted the figlet’s reply.

  Spacebread called for entrance, and a small blue hand opened the door; a wizened blue face with flowing beard peered around it.

  They quickly stood. “Your Majesty …”

  Gallwort gestured enigmatically, his crown wobbling with his movements. “Shush. Don’t bother with that formality now, my lady. I wanted to speak with you without stewards and lords and such, for just a moment.”

  “My ears are yours.” She bowed a little. “Are you sure you won’t change your mind about being regent? You have finer qualities of leadership than anyone in my court. The people want you. Everyone speaks your name. They will be heartbroken if you leave them.”

  She sighed. “Forgive me for refusing, Your Highness, but that task is entirely beyond me. You offer, with the best intentions, a yoke, albeit a gColden one. I am not your regent.”

  Gallwort shook his head. “Wise on top of it. Yes, a yoke. You are quite right. Why else do you think I wanted to retire in peace? Very well, I owe you too much to protest further. But … are you sure about your nomination for regent?”