The Enchantress of World's End
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Gondwane Epic #2
- Год: 101
- Язык: английский
- Год: DAW
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Enchantress of World's End». Краткое содержание книги:
Gondwane... When all the kingdoms of all the peoples of Earth had come and gone and new ones arose, it was on Gondwane they created their ephemeral glories.
On Gondwane, amid the turmoil of the last wars and the last quests and the last efforts of scientists and alchemists, there arose one final hero, the mighty Ganelon Silvermane.
The saga of Ganelon is the telling of master fantasist Lin Carter. And it is in the story of the Scarlet Enchantress that Ganelon first found the meaning of manhood.
“I gather you are no friend to Zelmarine?” he inquired quietly. “But weren’t you at the moon-festival last night?”
The Tigerman gave a snarling laugh, and spit into the sawdust, wrinkling up his whiskery snout. “Not Grrff, big man! He shares a cell in the prison wing of the Palace, albeit one slightly less snug and comfy than yours, if rumor is truth for once. If fellow-countrymen o’ Grrff’s were at the feast, the curs were renegades. Outcasts or renegades!”
Ganelon digested this news with considerable interest. It is always to the future benefit of a prisoner to make genial contact with his fellow-captives, it occurred to him. He introduced himself; the Tigerman blinked with surprise.
“The warrior who rallied the troops at Uth and broke the Indigons last year?” he asked. His yellow cat-eyes glowed with pleasure and his furry ears twitched “Well-met, then, big man! I am by name Grrff, a war-chief of the Farrowl clan of Xombol. Grrff led a party up against the blue vermin when they came swarming down out of the north, shortly ere they turned east at the Crystal Mountains to stampede against your town of Zermish. They were mighty fighters, and tough to kill; my hand, warrior!”
Ganelon took the furry paw and squeezed it in friendly fashion. He measured the Tigerman with curious eyes, and liked what he saw. The Xombolian only came to his shoulder, of course, but his mighty torso rippled with bulging thews beneath the short nap of his orange fur, which was striped with black and ivory. He had met Tigermen before, and he generally liked them. He said as much.
“I was in Xombol not long ago, with friends,” he added.
“Oh, aye? How are things there? Poor Grrffs been caged up here since the damnable Indigons crushed his warmen and left him cut off from any chances of homeward retreat. There was nowhere else to go but east, damn the filthy luck, and of course poor Grrff ran into an ambush in Dwarfland and the little monsters sold him into bondage here. What the Red Bitch wants with him is simple treason—knowledge of the guard-posts and troop-disposal about my King’s capitol; and as Grrff will not speak, she pens him here in durance, hoping to break his spirit!”
“King Vrowl? My master is a good friend of his, and we were guests in Xombol palace on the visit I told you of,” said Ganelon. They exchanged a few more words, but then Colonel Turmus, who had been distracted by a messenger, noticed the two captives conversing in low’ tones. He sent a pair of Automatons clanking over to separate them.
Till noon, Ganelon and Grrff the Tigerman exercised in the sun, using weapon after weapon against straw dummies as hacking-posts, but too widely apart for further words. When they left the field, however, they waved a friendly goodbye to each other, and exchanged conspiratorial grins and winks.
In the very stronghold of his enemies, Ganelon Silvermane had found a friend.
Somehow, the future looked a little brighter for that.
Every morning thereafter, Silvermane looked forward to his hours in the exercise-yard. Not only did he enjoy the opportunity to stretch and toughen his muscles, and to increase and develop his skills with the weapons of war, but he anticipated the furtive pleasures of conversation with the Tigerman. Indeed, he and his new-found friend managed to talk a bit, for Turmus was very often absent on his Queen’s business, and the Automatons stationed about the field to guard against his escape were too stupid or too uncaring to keep them apart.
It was from Grrff that he learned something about the ambitions of the Red Enchantress. “She’s a cunning, unscrupulous, intelligent, ruthless female,” growled the Tigerman. “She has notions to incorporate the Realm of the Nine Hegemons and the Voormlsh tribesmen, together with Dwarfland and such city-states about as Oym, Chx, and Abbergathy—to say nothing of Quay, Ixland, the country of the Holy Horxites and GrrfFs own beloved homeland of Karjixia, into one gigantic Empire. With her Redness, of course, as the Empress. She already has gotten a hold on some of the Dwarves, and she has managed to intimidate the Hegemons of Pergamoy, Sabdon and your own town of Zermish; Jargo’s next on the agenda, I fancy.”
“But how does she plan to manage it? She doesn’t have much of an army.”
Grrff shrugged, his nape-fur ruffling at the thought. “Don’t put down the Red Legion till you’ve seen them fight, big man! Anyway, she’s got some of the Dwarf-tribes under her thumb, and you know what ferocious fighters those green devils can be. Then she’s got her scythe-armed Automatons, of course. There must be a thousand of them by now, maybe twice that number. And more a-building every day, in the underground factories. Oh, you didn’t know about the factories? Well, Shai is a pretty place, if you like glass—and if you care for red; I’m sick to death of the color myself, after all these months—but didn’t you notice how many of the pretty buildings are mere facades, with nobody living inside them? What’s on the surface is to fool visiting ambassadors and Outlander spies. Underground, it’s all grimy manufactories, busily turning out the tools of war, and hordes of those metal men that can’t be killed. Thirty a day come rolling off the assembly lines, Grrff hears; but that may be only prison scuttlebutt …”
Ganelon rubbed his jaw reflectively.
“My master, the magician of Nerelon, knows a lot about her and considers her a powerful threat to Northern YamaYamaLand. I wonder if he knows about the underground war works.”
“Nerelon, eh? Grrff’s heard of him—a great friend of King Vrowl and an ally of his royal father, if we’re talking about the same Illusionist. Skinny little geezer, keeps himself covered and gloved, and wears perfumed smoke to hide his face? The same one, then. He was also a good friend to my ancestors, in the previous two or three reigns.”
“Really? Goodness, I didn’t know he was as old as all that; but you can never tell with magicians, can you?”
The Tigerman grinned, revealing strong white fangs set in bright pink gums. “You can’t, and that’s a fact. Grrff can recall one time he had a run-in with a troublesome wizard, up Thazarian mountain country. Fellow just came down one day, riding on a Phlygul. Planned to build his tower and lord it over some of the Karjixian villages down that way. The King dispatched poor Grrff on a punitive expedition, at the head of a thousand warriors, to pound some sense into his skull. Turned out to be a nice old fellow, after all, and willing to listen to reason … a thousand war-axes speak mighty eloquent, I guess … The whole trouble was, the wizard was so old he remembered Karjixia before we Tiger-folk evolved and got ourselves civilized. He thought the whole country was still just wild jungle-land, with nobody to own it! Fellow must have been all of fifty thousand years old! Name of Qesper Volphotex, as I recall. Nice-enough old human, once you talked some sense into him …”
Ganelon nodded absently, not really listening. His brow was furrowed with puzzlement.
“I wonder what she wants with me?” he mused. “Master was never sure about that. I don’t know anything about the defences of the Hegemonic cities; no war-chief, I was only a militiaman. Why do you suppose she has me locked up in such a luxurious cell, inviting me to feasts and all?”
“Grrff doesn’t know, big man,” growled the Tigerman. Then, ominously, he added: “But he’s a hunch you’re going to find out before the world’s much older …”
11. THE SUPERWOMAN SPEAKS
That very night, as it turned out, Ganelon got an inkling of what the Red Queen wanted of him.
He was invited to partake of a private supper in the seclusion of the Queen’s own suite. The apartments of Zelmarine were situated high in the tallest of the elfin spires of ruby glass, to which he was escorted by more of the omnipresent metal men who went clinking and clanking along, looking for all the world like suits of old-fashioned armor with nobody inside them.