The Bavarian Gate

27

Rillissa

Macurdy awoke spontaneously, feeling as if he'd slept for hours. Swinging his legs out of bed, he got up, went to the door and peer out. Two guards stood there. He pantomimed his hunger, and one of them led him down the corridor to a room with a 12 foot long table, and a floor covered with thinly spread straw. There he was seated, the guard standing behind him, Macurdy wondering how long it would be.

Ten minutes later a female came in, her appearance almost human, more handsome than beautiful, but with Voitik hair and eyes. Macurdy wondered if that was normal for female Voitar, or if she was a mixed-blood. Sending the guard away, she sat down across from him. "You are Kurt Montag," she said carefully. "Excuse my halting German. I have practiced it only two days."

He stared.

"My name is Rillissa. The Crown Prince has assigned me as your companion. I am told you are hungry. Food will soon be brought for you."

She recited her sentences as if doing a drill, but her pronunciations were quite good, and her grammar, if stiff, was correct.

"You began to learn German only two days ago?"

"Learn?" She frowned, then seemed to realize something. "Ah. Of course. You are not used to us. It is not necessary that I learn it, you see, only that I practice it to gain facility. Skill." She paused, then smiled. "I shall ask that you speak slowly, until I am more practiced. The Crown Prince warned me that you speak an atrocious dialect."

She smiled as if totally unaware that her comment might offend. Macurdy realized now that the Voitik species did in fact share a hive mind, as he'd speculated, that she tapped it to speak German, and that access alone was not sufficient for fluency. "You speak German well," he said. "I will try to speak slowly. I am glad the Crown Prince sent you."

A human servant came in, set the table for two, and left. Almost at once another entered with a tray. Breakfast was a kind of omelet, heavy on onions and what Macurdy guessed was barley, with a coarse dark molasses bread. On the side was butter, a kind of pickled fish, two large mugs, and a large pot of buttered tea with honey. While they ate, they talked hardly at all, lacking grounds for easy conversation; they'd need to concentrate to talk together.

Over tea he said, "I do not understand why the Crown Prince sent you."

"To help you learn well. Also, you have none of your own people here, and need a companion so you will not be lonely. Loneliness is a problem for you because you do not share mind."

It occurred to Macurdy that he'd rarely felt lonely in his life, but he let it pass. She smiled again, and changed the subject. "When you are ready, I have something to show you."

He swallowed the last of his tea, and she led him upstairs to a balcony. The sun had risen, and she pointed out the pavilion that housed the gate on this side. "That is where you arrived," she said. "And that"-she pointed past it, up the valley-"is the Gletscher that covered this location for a very long time, so that no one knew what was here."

Macurdy judged the glacier's foot as about a hundred yards above the gate.

"Seven years ago," she went on, "when the snow melted in May, a woman was found frozen, farther down the valley. No one knew who she was, but her clothing and shoes were strange. Though it was not known then, she had pushed her way more than three kilometers through snow, which could not have been nearly so deep as now."

Rillissa began to shiver, and they went back inside. Macurdy wondered if she lacked the talent to draw on the Web of the World, or just didn't know how.

"And of course," she went on, "no one could guess where the woman had come from, or how. To the local authorities, who are human, she was simply a strange discovery, a mystery, and soon no one thought about her anymore."

"Two months later, a cattle herder reported a strange couple at the site where the gate is. The woman was-" Rillissa paused, briefly uncertain of the word "-was in a coma, and the man who crouched beside her was raving. The woman soon died, and the man, who never recovered his sanity, died a few weeks later. It was supposed they were connected to the woman who had frozen-their clothing and shoes had similar peculiarities- but the mystery remained a local matter."

"Until a month later, when the same herd-girl found three dead men just where the couple had been found. They wore strange uniforms, and what were thought might be weapons, though how they worked was unknown. This brought the mystery to the attention of the imperial police."

The two events that could be dated had occurred when the moon was full, Rillissa went on, so a month later the imperial police had officers waiting, just in case. At midday they'd felt a physical pressure-somewhat like a strong wind-and three more strange humans had appeared suddenly, flailing and sprawling. The two in uniform soon died. The other recovered, after suffering what seemed to be the flu. He was a German psychic, who identified the frozen woman as a reputed witch, based on a reported disappearance, false teeth, and her clothing.

"Meanwhile, one of the imperial police had pushed against the repelling pressure, and after a brief darkness found himself in a strange place on top of a ridge. And not in midday sunlight, but the middle of night! Afraid he might not find the place again, and demoralized by isolation from the hive mind, he'd stayed there till daylight. Then men in uniform arrived, and arrested him." Rillissa shrugged. "And from that unintended exchange, a German psychic for an imperial police sergeant, has grown a relationship between our government and yours, and further exchanges."

"Then there are other Germans here besides me?"

"Others have been sent, partly to learn more about it. Only three survived, psychics, young women, who arrived early this winter. They were sick only briefly. We are trying to teach them to share mind, but unsuccessfully so far." She shrugged. "You are the first to arrive without at least being ill."

"Is that why I was brought through? To learn to share mind?"

"No. You are to be taught other skills. My father says you show more promise than others of your people."

"Your father? Who is he?"

"Crown Prince Kurqosz."

"You are a princess then?"

She laughed. "Me? A princess? To be a princess, my mother would have to be Voitik as well." Taking him by surprise, she leaned forward and kissed him. "No, I am a slave. But of royal blood; I have slaves of my own."

They donned furs and skis then, to explore the neighborhood, explorations that proved quite limited. Macurdy had never been on skis before, and floundered at first, Rillissa laughing and helping him. Afterward she took him to a hot tub, and began to undress. When he didn't at once follow her example, she ordered him to, then helped him. Before they left, she'd had him on a bench. What would the Crown Prince do if he found out? Montag asked her. She told him her father had instructed her to lie with him; he suspected Montag might have traits useful to the bloodline.

That confused as much as clarified. If Rillissa was a slave, how would her offspring by a foreigner become part of the royal bloodline? Or-perhaps the bloodline Kurqosz referred to was more like that of the family livestock.