Spacebread Read online

  “Are we going to look for the merchant tomorrow?” the figlet asked.

  “I don’t think so,” mused Spacebread, twirling her long whiskers. “It’s my instinct to stay here and try to learn more about what Basemore is up to. If I could somehow get Thracko out of the palace, I am sure I could get him to speak the truth. He was hiding something tonight, and I think Basemore knows what it is. Anyway, the merchant will likely stay in Black-Black until after the bazaar, if he exists at all. There will be time to hunt him down later.”

  “Then we stay here for a while,” the figlet said.

  Spacebread drained her goblet of wine. “Whether you stay or not is your own decision. I will be staying for a few days. I will accept your friendship if you wish to continue in my company. But, as I informed you before, it is not a quiet path. If you want an easy time, you should move off in another direction.” Her eyes made him look at her.

  “I understand,” he said, summoning his full stature. “I have no home to go back to, and I know no trade—I’m not even a Warrior. And besides, I am your slave. You paid for me, I have the papers. I will serve you, wherever you go. Nothing you take me into could be worse than being eaten by a gnorlff, from which you have already saved me.”

  Spacebread smiled at him and toasted with her glass. “To your decision, then, and your bravery.”

  Swelling with pride, the figlet said, “If you could locate the parts, I could make a Sanguakkoid cryo-pistol. Then I could serve you even better.”

  She laughed good-naturedly. “Surely. Surely. Tomorrow. But for tonight I am tired; I’ve had too little rest of late. This trip began as a vacation, after all.”

  The figlet took the hint and made his nest in the icon nook beside the door, snuggling up into a ball with his bag as pillow and his slave papers as cover. The carven idol, multi-armed, which also occupied the niche, did not seem to disturb him.

  Spacebread tucked her pistol beneath her pillow and turned the lantern out. She nestled in the covers, tried to put all her shouting thoughts away, and eventually drifted into a dreamless sleep.

  YET, THOUGH IT WAS DREAMLESS, after a long peaceful period when there was nothing, something began bumping its way through the warm dark chambers of her unconscious. A dim, half-formed voyager was adrift in her world, a sound differing very slightly from all the other night sounds, and by that slightness singling itself out for the attention of her dreamless brain. A small dream formed around the sound, like a pearl around a grit of sand.

  She ran. Her lungs tore and heaved from the pain of breathing and yet she ran. They were close behind her. Only a few alleys and sodden side streets away. She could hear the scraping and chirping of their golden armor and the low hum of their rifles building up deadly charges. Something caught at her ankles, and the cobbled ground smashed into her shoulder, but she fought her way back up, staggering on. Huddled figures in the alley scrunched closer to its walls. A muffled shout rang out. A cry. A rifle cracked and a beam of energy buzzed past her, frying the air by her ear.

  She woke in the darkness of the room. That was no dream. Her gun was in her clenched hand. She rolled off the bed and flung the single shutter away from her open window. Another rifle fired. The sounds were coming from down the street. Her sleeping mind had picked them up and amplified them, warning her. She turned the lantern up slightly. There was some commotion a block or two away …

  A figure ran at the limit of his strength and speed, hooked a bar on a window and swung into the alley by her window. His face was a mask of terror, pale and streaked. She recognized him instantly with a jolt. Good fortune had sharpened her options.

  “Thracko! Over here!”

  The Ralphain captain flinched at her words, expecting a plasma blast or a poison pellet. But there instead was the arm and face of the feline who had found the belt and started this mess. She beckoned from a window. There was no time to decide. He used the momentum of his flight to propel his leap to her window, scraping his shoulder violently, but he got through.

  Spacebread pulled his legs after him and slammed the shutter back and latched it. The figlet awoke in the murky dimness, saw the moving shadows, and squealed.

  “Quiet,” Spacebread whispered fiercely.

  The pursuers chased Thracko’s echoing footsteps around the corner and down the alley. Spacebread listened carefully as they clattered away past her window and around further corners. Thracko had collapsed across the bed, chest heaving violently. The running slowed down, and after a time came the sounds of cursing and doors being pounded on down the street.

  “They’ll be back here before long,” Spacebread muttered, as if to herself. She turned to the captain. “Now. I presume the regent has ordered your death in the matter of the belt buckle. Basemore is not the type to leave loose ends untied.”

  “He’s going to put me in his gallery with the rest of his enemies. He’ll turn me to stone.” Thracko eyed her uneasily, wiping the sweat from his face. There was shouting somewhere down the street.

  Spacebread swiveled the gun to cover Thracko. “You have two alternatives, Captain. Either you tell me where that buckle is and why it was stolen and I help you escape, or you do not tell me and I give you up and make some very good friends in the bargain. Which is it?”

  Thracko whimpered. He writhed across the bed against the wall. He pressed his palms into his eye sockets, shivering, and tried to calm himself.

  “H-he’s going to kill me. He’ll find me no matter where you take me. That’s Dzackle out there! Dzackle the madman!” he stammered.

  “I thought I killed Dzackle. Speak!” She pointed the gun boldly at him.

  His head shook violently from side to side. “N-no. You burned him, but not badly.”

  “Well, he’s going to be pounding on that door in a few minutes,” Spacebread said in a cold calm voice. “What shall I do? If you tell me the truth, no one will find you.”

  Thracko gulped. “I suppose there’s no use keeping to the story. I’ll die anyway.” He hung his head as if in relief and said, “The stone is with the regent. He ordered it stolen. We located you on Capella and followed you to Fomalhaut. Dzackle went alone to steal it. You know the rest.”

  “And Dzackle is the one out there? The one who killed Gramlin?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “The regent has made him captain of the guards. I was the commander of the old King’s Guards. But VolVarnix has filled the ranks with adventurers. Scum. And there are now far more men in the army than is legal. All loyal to him. Dzackle is insane. He’ll do anything the regent tells him.”

  “What does Base—VolVarnix want with my buckle? Quickly!”

  “I-I don’t know. You have to believe me. All I know is that the regent has charts and tables given to him by Lord Dezorn, which have the image of the buckle on them.” He sagged, as if telling the truth had broken his tension.

  “Dezorn,” Spacebread sneered, “the gnorlff.”

  The figlet, who had hummed down from his perch to sit behind Spacebread in the window, gave a shudder. He hoped he would never see another gnorlff. Suddenly there were running footsteps in the alley. One man shouted to search the inn.

  “Is the regent still at the palace?” Spacebread whispered as she grabbed her pack.

  Thracko shook his head. “They flew off to Lord Dezorn’s plantation near Blik-Twell at midnight. Please. I’ve told you the truth. Hide me.”

  “I’ll do better,” Spacebread said, buckling on her belt and kicking her way into boots. “I’ll let you follow me out of here. Get ready to travel, Klimmit.”

  The figlet quickly gathered his baggage. Spacebread gestured for Thracko to be silent. She did some tuning at the back of her pistol, then set her feet wide apart and raised the pistol to point between two massive rafters. A scaley rat blinked at her and slithered out of the way. There was a blinding pink flash. She sprang to the top of a chest and looked out through the resulting blackened hole in the roof.

  Her head reappeared momentarily. “Follow
me quietly.”

  After her boots vanished through the ceiling, Thracko nearly fell down going after her. The figlet followed somewhat uneasily just as someone began rapping loudly on the door.

  They had ascended into some sort of voluminous loft, or storage room. Spacebread whispered that it was part of a warehouse. There were stacks and bales of things all over. In the eerie half-light of the opening, Spacebread took a disk from her belt and spun it directly over the hole, like a top. It stayed, spinning effortlessly in the air.

  “Quickly now,” she said, and ran ahead of them.

  A tiny light, projected from her gun, bobbed ahead of them through a maze of bundles. The air was close and musty. Thracko whined. There were rattling, slithering noises in the darkness behind bales. Suddenly there were shouts behind them. A helmeted head appeared through the opening in the floor.

  The disk exploded. It was a spinning whirligig of flame, suddenly turning the darkness into flickering half-light.

  “An air mine,” Spacebread said over her shoulder. “It’ll block their way.”

  They came to an area of blank wall. Spacebread snapped her gun up and burned another opening ahead of them. After the flash, they could see that it opened just a meter or two from a pitched tiled roof. Spacebread reset her gun.

  “Just follow me and keep down,” she said, then leaped to the roof and, without breaking her stride, ran with low profile to the peak.

  They followed. The figlet had not known he could fly that fast. They traveled across the red tiled roof, jumped over an alley to the roof beyond. Then moved along a narrow ledge, each breathing heavily with exertion and fear. The two Ralphian moons were setting, and the sky was growing streaked with dawn. Their three shadows grew more distinct by the minute. Then Spacebread stiffened. They stepped down onto a parapet and hugged the wall. There were soldiers below knocking on doors. Gruff salutes echoed along the narrow street. Thracko looked at Spacebread with panicked eyes.

  “Do nothing,” she advised quietly.

  “B-but the sun is rising …”

  She motioned for him to be silent. “Are we far from the city wall?”

  “No. A few blocks,” he whispered.

  She rolled over and peeked beyond the edge. The soldiers were working their way toward the great wall that stretched around Black-Black. And so was she. Her snowy brows knitted thoughtfully, and she rubbed the butt of her gun against her nose nervously.

  “Klimmit,” she said, “do you suppose you could float down beside the guard beneath us and bash him on the head with something?”

  The figlet gulped, then, pretending he was courageous, spied a discarded wine bottle on the parapet and hefted it. He had never hit anyone before, though he had gone through a lot of Warrior training. Too much horrified at what he was doing to speak, the figlet nodded. Before he could change his mind, he popped over the ledge and sank, close to the wall, down to doorway level. The soldier, a lizardlike person of grim demeanor with thick battle armor, was pounding on a door. He looked over his shoulder at the soldier across the street, who was arguing with a sleepy woman. The figlet could hear the sap whizzing fearfully through his cells. The soldier knocked again and a light came on inside. The figlet took a deep breath and bobbed down, swinging the bottle awkwardly but with all his strength. The soldier noticed the floating creature just before the bottle thumped solidly between his eyes. The figlet was jerked against the door by the force of the blow, as the soldier spilled backwards down some steps and into the street. The bottle shattered noisily.

  The other soldier spun, shoving the arguing lady back and crouching, beastlike, with his gun poised. He spotted the figlet and aimed.

  A blast crackled above them, and a bolt of plasma, superheated ionized gas, lanced off the soldier’s armor. He was knocked off balance by the impact and only managed to fire once, wildly, before Spacebread fired again. His shot burned the wall beside Klimmit, but Spacebread’s second bolt hit a joint in his armor. The soldier was blown back into the open doorway. The woman screamed.

  By the time the figlet recovered and buzzed up to find them, Spacebread and Thracko were on the roof of the next building, but she grinned at him and gave him a thumbs-up sign. He beamed. The sap now sang through his core with jubilation. He had acted like a Warrior.

  More shouting sounded as they neared the last gap between the houses and the city wall. It sounded as if the attack on the soldiers had been discovered.

  “Now they know where to look,” Spacebread hissed.

  They climbed onto the last building, but the space between the roof and the city wall was too much to jump. And now there was the sound of a motored vehicle clanking through the street behind them. A loud voice commanded something.

  “Dzackle!” the Captain screamed, and tried to climb over Spacebread.

  She elbowed him in the ribs, hard, and rolled him off her. It was then that she saw the ladder, bracketed to the wall of the house below. Apparently some sort of fire precaution. She urged the figlet aloft, and with his help, it was soon swung up to span the gap between their perch and the wall like a bridge. But by that time the racket behind them had increased. Running footsteps spattered like evil rain through the dawn streets. A shot rang out and a beam crackled beside them.

  “Over the wall, quickly, figlet!” Spacebread commanded in her most commanding voice, then turned and answered the shot with one of her own.

  She didn’t have to tell him again. The figlet buzzed across the dizzying gap and hunched up behind the city wall. Spacebread followed onto the ladder, hugging low.

  “There he is!” a distant voice sounded. Thracko surged onto the buckling ladder, but Spacebread was only half across herself, and she had to struggle both to keep her footing and to prevent Thracko from falling. Plasma beams crackled past them. They were now clearly silhouetted against the yellow-dawning sky. A strange gunshot cut suddenly through the approaching din; Thracko gasped and went limp in her arms. She hung onto him with her left arm and fired repeatedly down the street, scattering the soldiers. Then she spun and leaped the remaining meters across to the wall, and jumped without stopping into the dark jungle below.

  They landed in a thick wall of moss, and Spacebread rolled to break the fall. The figlet hummed down from his hiding place.

  “What’s wrong with him?” the figlet gulped, staring at Thracko.

  Spacebread plucked a small pointed pellet from his arm. “This,” she answered. “Poison.”

  Thracko moaned. “King … must tell Gallwort. Tell the old king the new regent is a tyrant …”He suddenly choked on the words, gave a jerk, and was dead.

  The ladder rattled overhead and helmeted faces peered over the wall. Spacebread fired and threw herself further into the bush. She heard the figlet fly past her and felt the warm breath of plasma guns slice through the thicket. She fired again, almost over her shoulder, and hacked her way still further into the murky forest with her sword. Soon there came the crashing of heavy boots on the path behind her. She ran now, headlong and without feeling the vines and thorns ripping her clothing. The figlet was nowhere to be seen. She could only hope he would catch up with her. The glint of armor shone briefly through the tattered pathway she was leaving behind her, and she fired at it. A howling, cursing cry answered her blast.

  Without warning she stumbled into a clearing, almost careening off a strange chiseled stone image in its center. Apparently it was some sort of local shrine. There was a pile of decaying fruits on the altar before the image. She listened attentively, but the tramping was now far behind her. Perhaps her firing had discouraged them a bit, or they had strayed in the foliage. She pulled a stubborn prickly vine from her face and knelt in the thick grass, her chest heaving.

  Keeping an eye on the way she had come, she worked with a patient yet desperate speed, unslinging her black pack and undoing it with one hand. The inside of it was familiarly cold to her touch, tingling the fur on her paw. She found the vessel she sought down in the blackness and hurriedly
unscrewed its cap, tossing the contents into the grass, where it twitched and mewled like a tiny child. She glanced at the path behind her. No one yet. With a flick of her wrist she turned a switch on the bottom of the container and aimed it at the struggling creature. A loud warbling vibration flowed into the figure in the grass. The creature kicked, and grew, then kicked again and became even larger. It made a growling, groaning cry as it expanded at a blinding rate.

  When the last beam from the container subsided, Spacebread threw it haphazardly back into the Foldover bag where it spun through other dimensions and disappeared. The animal that had come from it now stood as tall as Spacebread at the shoulder. It struggled up from a kneeling position and blinked at her, then gave its groaning cry again.

  “No time, Jolita,” Spacebread snapped as she re-slung the pack and hoisted herself onto the animal’s back by its long mane. “North, now!”

  The creature, resembling a goat and a horse, had two amber horns, and two front legs, but only a single powerful rear leg. It was called a ghorse. It shook its bony head to clear the long interdimensional sleep away, then sprang at a fierce gallop into the foliage. Spacebread hung low behind its neck and burned a course ahead with her pistol. Smoke from the roasted vegetation swirled past them as Jolita the ghorse swiftly put an unconquerable distance between Basemore’s guards and Spacebread. They headed north toward the narrow isthmus that connected the two continents ruled by Basemore, toward the northern land and the plantation of Lord Dezorn.

  [5]

  Lucidan’s Vision

  THE ALIEN FIGLET trudged grumpily along a gully and kept a wary eye on the shaggy hedge beside him. He was cold and lonely from two nights and days in the jungle and recently there had been something moving softly parallel to him through the brush. He had thrown a stick at it and the noise had stopped immediately, but now it had resumed.

  The sky was brightening. Ontagon had risen through pastel clouds only an hour or so ago, and it was not yet fully light. It had rained during the night, and a haze still clung to the puddles and sloughed across the gullies and dales of Ralph like fluffy pale caterpillars. Becoming more alarmed at the soft shadowing of whatever was stalking him, Klimmit BarKloof put more effort into his hovering and lifted up between the overhanging vines, where whatever it was couldn’t reach him. He continued in his generally northern direction, trying to stay away from thickly foliaged trees. Birds ate vegetables, too. He had been lost for a long time, ever since he had parted from Spacebread at the wall of Black-Black. He had flown until he was exhausted that day and had had no idea of where he was when he slowed down. He had been heading north ever since, hoping to run into Spacebread. He gambled that she was still alive and on the quest for her belt buckle. If not, he was genuinely lost and would never see her again.