Elysia Read online

  Of the two remaining messengers: one was Tiania herself, who flew Oth-Neth to The Tree in the Gardens of Nymarrah; the other was a Dchi-chi pupil of Esch, specializing in the cryptic codes, enigmatic and riddlish conversation

  of wizards, who flew a gravity-defying airform to the spherical aerie of Ardatha Ell at the uppermost limits of Elysia's atmosphere.

  In the Corridor of Clocks, the Thermal Being paused before a huge time-clock of near-indestructible glass. The four curious hands on its great dial were tipped with gold to make them more conspicuous, but their motion about the hieroglyphed dial was utterly eccentric for all that, which is the way of such devices. The Thermal Being considered his instructions one last time; he would carry them out to the letter, not returning to Elysia until... until this thing with the Great Old Ones was finished. Which meant that he might never return. So be it.

  All done, he opened and entered the time-clock, flew it out of the subterranean corridor, up over the Blue Mountains, to a point in the upper atmosphere where clock and passenger both blinked out of existence in this plane and so left Elysia. And his destination was far, far away in the deepest voids of space ...

  The clock chosen by the fragile fairy-insect creature was a small grey metal cube of nine-inch sides more conveyance than vehicle proper, and featureless except for the inevitable dial with its four bizarrely wandering pointers —into which he placed Kthanid's memory-crystal before whistling a sequence of instructions which the dock, in some mysterious way; accepted. For all its unspectacular appearance, this leaden cube was a very special clock indeed: it was not constructed to operate in the physical space-time continuum at all but in those subconscious dimensions formed by the minds of all creatures who dream. It was, quite literally, a dock of dreams, a mechanical monitor of many of the dreamlands of the psycho-sphere. And it, too, had a special quest: to seek out .and deliver its cargo to a very special mechanical being. No sooner were the whistled instructions concluded than the grey cube grew less solid, became transparent, finally disappeared in a rush of displaced air. Satisfied, the insect creature took wing and departed ...

  And in the same moment that the dream-clock passed from Elysia's conscious world, high above her cities and oceans and fields, Esch's favourite student approached the silver sphere which was Ardatha Ell's retreat. The comb-headed creature flew his airform close to the wind-riding, highly reflective surface of the sphere, adjusted his vehicle's controls to 'hover,' rapped upon a curved silver panel with the bony knuckles at the end of a vestigial wing.

  'Who knocks?' the sphere dolefully inquired after a moment, asking its question in three mechanically-created languages, all of which the Dchi-chi understood.

  `No one,' he at once answered, likewise in triplicate, knowing how much Ardatha Ell would appreciate so cryptic a statement.

  `No one knocks, and speaks to me in three tongues? Well, then, the equilibrium is maintained, for I am not at home.'

  The Dchi-chi did not even pause to consider this (Kthanid had already apprised him of the wizard's absence, at least of his part-absence) but said: `I meant that I am no one in the great scheme of things, as I'm sure you well know, wizard. But my message is from a definite someone.' This time he had used only one language, the English of Earth, widely known in Elysia.

  `And am I acquainted with this someone?'

  'Should I name him, or would you prefer to fathom his identity?'

  `You may couch his name in terms, if it please you.'

  Knowing that it would please Ardatha Ell even more, the Dchi-chi said: 'Very well, let me say that if your cap was a conical titfer of white wizardry, his would be a crown of mighty beneficence.' do not wear a head garment,' said the sphere, speaking for Ardatha Ell.

  `Nor does he.'

  'Hmm!' said the sphere, thoughtfully. 'He is mighty, he sends out messengers to do his bidding, he is good, and if he wore a crown it would be a kindly one. Heil Clues galore — and an anagram, too! "Kind hat," indeed! Kthanid!'

  'Excellent!' declared the Dchi-chi.

  `What's more,' said the sphere, 'you are a Dchi-chi and likely one . of Master Esch's best pupils. This is a simple deduction: who else but a Dchi-chi would be adept in so many tongues, and practised in the curious ways of wizards to boot? Oh, you are Dchi-chi, certainly, but not the very master. No, for while your riddle was merely middling, his are ever desperately difficult.'

  'Still, I do my best,' answered his visitor with a shrug.

  'Indeed, and who could ask more of you than that?' agreed the sphere on behalf of Ardatha Ell. 'And now you may enter.'

  The curved panel opened outwards and formed a ramp with steps, which the Dchi-chi climbed without hesitation. And: 'Use my house as you will,' the machine voice continued, as the bird-man made his way down a shiny metal corridor toward the centre, 'even though, as you were warned aforetime, I myself am not at home and so may not welcome you.'

  'Nor likely to be at home,' answered the other, arriving at Ardatha Ell's innermost apartments. 'Not yet for a while, anyway. But tell me pray: since you are not here, where then are you?'

  'In the manse of Exior K'mool, a sorcerer late of Theem'hdra in the primal planet Earth, now Lord of Lith in Andromeda. We amuse ourselves with cryptical conjecturings ...'

  'Pray offer your friend my compliments,' said the Dchichi, staring about in amazement, 'and tell him that if ever he has need of a half-decent linguist - '

  'What?' Ardatha Ell chuckled. 'Why, Exior K'mool was unriddling the stars when your remote ancestors, were eggs in the nest of Archaeopteryx! But say, what bothers you now?'

  'Only this,' answered the Dchi-chi with something of a gulp, 'that apparently the greater part of you is here after all!'

  For there, suspended on a gravitic bed of air in the centre of this central room, surrounded in the soft green haze of glowing emerald globes that floated around him, lay the body of the wizard, horizontal where his clothes drifted lazily, weightlessly outward from him. All of eight feet tall, Ardatha Ell, but slender as a wand in his robes of floating, fiery bronze mesh. Young-seeming, and yet white-haired and with skin pale as death; his eyes were closed and sunken under purple lids, like those of a corpse. Six-fingered, his hands, with thumbs on both inside and out and the nails of his long fingers white as wax, and lacquered black at their pointed tips. Sharp-pointed his chin, his nose too, and the bronze mesh slippers on his feet curled at their toes.

  No beat showed in his breast, or if there was one it was imperceptibly slow, no breath seemed drawn or to issue from his lips; no proper signs of life were in him at all. And yet:

  'I beg to differ,' came that voice from some unseen mechanical source, causing the Dchi-chi to start. 'The lesser part, surely? For this recumbent shell here is only the flesh of Ardatha Ell. The mind - which is greater by far, which is more truly me - that is in Exior K'mool's manse in Andromeda.'

  The Dchi-chi gulped again, his gizzard contracting, and gazed all about at the room's crammed shelves and sorcerous appurtenances: the ancient books and bottles, charts and charms, even a shewstone like that of Kthanid in the Hall of Crystal and Pearl. And: 'Of course!' he concurred with a nervous chirrup. 'Why, this must be the very least part of you, I see that now. But, good sir, time waits for no creature and I carry Kthanid's message, and —'

  ' — And you must fly, little bird? And the secret of your cryptic statement — that for the time being I shall not re-enter Elysia — lies hid in Kthanid's message, eh?' The voice seemed far less mechanical now, much more vibrant and forceful. Even ominous, in a way. 'Very well, let's have that message now. Merely place your hand — or whatever you have which passes for one — on the pale brow of that sleeper there. Then think your message, or chirp it if .you will, or even couch it in rhyme or riddle, and I shall receive and understand.'

  Gingerly the Dchi-chi did as instructed, placed his bony bird-hand upon the brow of the suspended wizard, and ... instantly it was as if his claw was glued there, taken root in Ardatha Ell's skull and held
fast by some irresistible force! He felt his message, which he would have passed anyway, sucked out of him in a moment — following which he was at once released. Staggering backwards he heard the wizard's dry, mechanical chuckle. And:

  `There, all done,' said Ardatha Ell. But in the next moment, in a voice more grave: 'Aye, and this is an important task Kthanid has set me. You should have said so before now, little bird, instead of posing and parroting.'

  But the Dchi-chi was already fluttering his way back down the shining corridor to the outer portal. Out into the gusting higher atmosphere of Elysia he went and down the metal steps to his airform, and only then did he pause to say: 'I thank you for your hospitality, wizard. Alas, my wit is small and likewise my talent, when compared with such as yours.'

  `Not at all,' said the sphere through the bluster of air, once more completely cold and mechanical. 'We all have to begin somewhere. But when next you call, first make sure I'll be at home in person to greet you, eh? Or perhaps 111 speak to your master, Esch, and tell him to let you come more often; and we can test each other's mettle with riddles, or 1'11 teach you some tongues you haven't even heard of yet. What say you, Dchi-chi, who fancied himself proficient in the many ways of wizards?'

  Casting off, the Dchi-chi answered: 'I thank you, sir, and hardly like to appear ungrateful but Esch keeps me very busy, and I haven't much of a head for heights and truth to tell, I'm afraid I'd bore you very quickly!' He dipped his airform toward the fields far below.

  'Ah, well! So be it,' the sphere called after him. 'Farewell, then, little bird.' And the steps flattened themselves and folded back, becoming a panel in the sphere's silver flank as before.

  ... And in the fire-floating manse of Exior K'mool where it drifted over the bubbling lava lakes of Lith, two great wizards nodded and chortled, amused for a moment by this diversion whose source lay in Elysia on the far side of eternity. And then they returned to their game of chess . . .

  Tiania, the fourth messenger, sat high in the branches of the Tree in the Gardens of Nymarrah. The fork where she perched was broad as a branching path, but even if she slipped she would not fall very far. The Tree's sensitive tendrils were never far away; indeed the one that carried his powerful thoughts and emotions lay on Tiania's pulsing wrist. His leaves were, huge as blankets and just as soft; his smaller branches were bigger than the oaks of Earth; all of his care and attention were centred now on this favourite child of Elysia.

  Six hundred feet below, there the Tree's vast roots spread out in Nymarrah's rich soil, while as high again overhead his topmost leaves, small and lush green, trembled in Elysia's synthetic sunlight; but here in his heart sat Tiania, talking with him as they had talked a hundred times before, though rarely so seriously:

  `And you will speak to that Tree in the land of Earth's dreams, and pass on Kthanid's message as I've told it to you, word for word?' she begged for at least the tenth time, while the Tree caressed her with the soft-furred edge of a leaf.

  'I sleep and dream, too, child,' he answered in her mind. 'If that dream-Tree may be found — even on a world as far away as Earth — then I shall find him. Aye, and I'll pass on Kthanid's message. Now be sure of that: if I must dream all night, I'll find him.' He was silent for a moment, then said: 'He must be very dear to you, this Searcher?'

  'He's a friend like no other,' she answered, sighing. 'But for Henri I'd not be here. He's a brother to me, a lifelong friend and companion to my man, a champion to all lesser creatures. And we treat him like this!'

  'Well, then,' said the Tree's gentle 'voice' in her head, 'if he's all of these things my task is made doubly important. And lifelong friend of Titus Crow, you say? That alone were more than enough! No, I shall not fail you. But why are you alone today? Where is your Titus?'

  'With Kthanid,' she answered in a whisper, 'in the Hall of Crystal and Pearl. He's there, and by now he's very likely somewhere else.'

  And with that she fell silent and was satisfied to let the Tree comfort her ...

  4 Familiar Winds

  Ithaqua The Wind-Walker was back on Borea.

  Once, three years ago, this Great Old One would have sat atop his totem temple throne four or five miles from the foot of the plateau out in the white waste; he would have sat there and scowled at the plateau — threatening occasionally with raised, massive club-like fist, or lightnings called from living, lowering skies — while his wolf-warriors and the wild Children of the Winds howled and cavorted at his great splayed feet and made sacrifice to him. And when the mood took him he would have raised up tornadoes of snow and ice, gigantic wind-devils tall as the plateau itself, to hurl shatteringly against the hollow mountain's impervious flanks.

  Three years ago, aye ..

  But Ithaqua's totem temple was no more; at Hank Silberhutte's bidding, Henri-Laurent de Marigny had used the time-clock to destroy it utterly, a crippling blow to Ithaqua's monstrous pride. More than that, Ithaqua himself had felt the sting of de Marigny's weird hyper-dimensional vehicle, had come to understand that the plateau's Warlord and his friend from the Motherworld had his measure. And so now he stood off and kept his distance, especially since he sensed that de Marigny had returned, and that once again the time-clock and its near invincible weapon of the Elder Gods were resident in the plateau.

  Like some toxic breath of ill-omen, the Wind-Walker had come back to Borea in that same hour that Armandra called her council of tribal chiefs to attend her in the Hall of the Elders, to witness her intended communication with ether winds from all corners of space and time. And while they had gathered there at the counselling place, so he had come striding down the star-winds to Borea, evil burning in his black heart and the unquenchable lust for revenge levering his alien blood.

  And because his totem temple was no more, and also because he hated and feared the time-clock, now he perched a good six miles from the plateau on the rusting steel hulk of a British ice-breaker of the late '20s; a once-proud vessel, fashioned perhaps in the shipyards of the Weir or the Tyne and long since paid for by Lloyds of London: 'lost with all hands, somewhere inside the Arctic Circle', stranded now in the ice and snows of the white waste. There the ship lay — half-shrouded in ice, her once powerful propellers jutting up at an odd angle, monument to Ithaqua's enormous cruelty snatched up by him in - deranged glee and borne here through alien voids, finally to be tossed down in the snows of a strange world like some discarded toy.

  And the beast himself, crouched upon the ship's flank, the carmine stars of his eyes thoughtful in his dark blot of a head where they burned on the distantly jutting rock of the plateau. For aye, he knew that Armandra talked with the winds, those traitor winds (to him) of time and space. But what his half-human daughter could do gently and without coercion, he would do brutally with blows and curses. And what secrets she could learn by simply asking, he could likewise learn with demands and threats of doom ...

  In the Hall of the Elders, Armandra was in trance.

  To call that place a 'hall' were no misnomer: it was a huge cavern of a chamber, lit by many flaring flambeaux; and at its centre a fur-decked dais supporting a carved, massively ornate throne. There sat Armandra, her white hands curved over the throne's stone arms, eyes closed and regal head upright, breast slowly rising and falling under a white fur jacket.

  Before her face, hanging down from the forward-curving back of the throne and suspended on a chain of gold, was the large medallion she normally wore at her neck, sigil of her supremacy over the winds. Slowly the medallion turned, its gold burnished to a blaze in the bright glare of the hall's flambeaux.

  Descending tiers of stone benches encircled the Hall of the Elders, giving it the rich acoustics of an auditorium; so that now, in the near-absolute silence, even the steady sussuration of Armandra's breathing could be heard in all quarters. And certainly there were sufficient elders there to hear it! Chiefs of all the plateau's peoples they were: Tlingit, Blackfoot, Esquimaux, Chinook and Nootka, and all the old Northwest Tribes of old Earth, their anc
estors brought to populate Borea in primal times by Ithaqua the Wind-Walker. There they sat in full ceremonial regalia, just as they might have sat at some meeting of the great chiefs in a northern forest of the Motherworld, watching Armandra with their eagle eyes and breathlessly awaiting her words and works.

  To the left of Armandra's throne kneeled Oontawa, lovely Indian handmaiden and squaw of Kota'na; she was there in case the plateau's priestess should require assistance in this task she'd set herself: to call down before her those strange winds which forever wander between the worlds. And at the foot of the dais, at its front, there stood the warlord's small party: Silberhutte 'himself, his bear-brother Kota'na, Tracy (Hank's sister) and Jimmy Franklin, and The Searcher, Henri-Laurent de Marigny, and his woman Moreen. With them stood Charlie Tacomah, a modem Shawnee late of the Motherworld who had befriended Silberhutte and co. when first Ithaqua had .brought them across the star-spaces to Borea — a mistake the Wind-Walker must surely rue to this very day. After. the war in Korea, Charlie had travelled north in the Motherworld to write a book on the old Indian and Eskimo tribes, and there on the fringe of the Arctic he'd run foul of Ithaqua. Korea to Borea, as simple as that! He'd spent some time in the camps of the savage Children of the Winds, had finally run off to the plateau. His military experience had been useful, for he'd been a strategist; now he had a seat on the Council of Elders. But his high-ranking friends preferred that he stand here with them.