The Bavarian Gate

28

The Palace

They left the next morning in four horse-drawn sleighs: Kurqosz and Montag with Tsulgax and Rillissa, plus guards and personal slaves. Macurdy didn't know it, but sleighs were almost the only land conveyance that the Voitik species, the "Voitusotar," rode in. Meanwhile they'd dressed him as prosperous humans dressed in Hithmearc, his cloak and cap of dark lustrous fur. He strutted a little in them, as a peasant boy might.

Dusk was settling when they reached a town, on the shore of a sizeable river, the Jugnal. There the snow was much less, and the river unfrozen. One wing of an inn had been prepared for the crown prince and his entourage-Montag and Rillissa shared a large feather bed-and in the morning the whole party started downstream on a pair of luxurious barges.

For four days and four nights they floated, the first day on the Jugnal, then on the mighty Rovenstarn, through sunshine, drizzle, and snow showers, carried by the current and the slow strong strokes of burly human oarsmen, past bluffs, towns, the mouths of tributaries, and the overlooking ruins of castles. Castles knocked down, according to Rillissa, by Kurqosz's barbarian ancestors after they'd conquered these lands. Of other traffic there was little, beyond barges piled high with fuelwood, but of those there were plenty, for long peace had brought burgeoning populations. The fuelwood cutters had stripped the country increasingly bare of woods, and fuel was brought from farther and farther away, from rugged hills and mountains.

Late each day the royal barges stopped, just long enough to take on provisions and new oarsmen, then pull away again. Rillissa's appetite for sex was remarkable. Fortunately she was aware of male limitations, and between bouts in bed, they spent breaks bundled on deck, watching the banks pass, and talking. Her German flowed more and more easily, and she recounted for Macurdy the history of the Voitusotar. They'd originated far to the north, in a land of plateaus, mountains, ice fields and fjords, a murky country wet with rain and snow, mists and fogs. The valley dwellers had herded goats and sheep, the highlanders reindeer.

Then an epizootic had nearly wiped out their reindeer, and the highland clans had migrated eastward across a vast, neararctic wilderness they called "the neck." In all other directions the sea had blocked them, and on the sea the Voitusotar were so gripped by violent nausea, they died. River boats were the extent of their travel on water.

Nor did this tall and slender people ride animals or carriages. They became ill from the motion, though not so badly as on ships. Mostly they traveled afoot, and no human could begin to run with them. This people who'd long herded goats and reindeer in moccasins and on skis, who'd hiked a thousand leagues in their migrations, could run for days on end if need be. An ordinary Voitik male could easily outsprint a human champion. Running was bred into them, and pride in it instilled from infancy. In war they were cavalry without horses.

Compared to those they'd conquered, the Voitusotar were not a numerous people, despite intrinsically long lifespans and an indisposition to illness. For they were not very fertile, even among themselves, and they culled their offspring. But they were shrewd and ruthless warriors and potent sorcerers, whose hive mind enabled them to plan and coordinate in battle to a degree inconceivable to humans.

She also began to teach him the language of the land, Hithmearcisc. It was not, she said, the language the Voitusotar had brought with them, but in time it became the one they used. Voitik was used primarily for naming and spells.

He found himself recognizing occasional words he'd learned in Yuulith. Hithmearcisc and Yuultal seemed to be of the same world, sister tongues, apparently with an ocean somehow in between. This sparked his interest, and as he began to develop an ear for Hithmearcish, he recognized more and more cognates.

He avoided mentioning Yuultal, and Rillissa commented on how rapidly he learned. Probably she mentioned it to Kurqosz as well.

Just after daybreak on the fifth day, the barges came to a city known as Voitazosz, gray with old and dirty snow, and murky with drizzle. By that time, to Rillissa's annoyance, her sexual demands had debilitated Macurdy. Fortunately he'd gotten her pregnant; that was clear to him from her aura. And to her from the hive mind: The embryo was already plugged into it, so to speak, a minute and primitive animal presence that shared life force with all her father's race, and with some mixed-bloods like herself.

The only person Macurdy wanted to sire children on was Mary, who was in another world. Meanwhile, Rillissa's pregnancy had taken the pressure off him.

At Voitazosz, the River Quarm flowed into the Rovenstarn, and their steersmen turned up it. Two miles above the city was the imperial palace, extensive as a town-mighty fortress walls with towers and domes looming above them. As a farmboy from Washington County, Indiana, warlord of Yuulith's Rude Lands, undersheriff of Nehtaka County, and an American G.I. in England, nothing he'd ever seen had struck him as so impressive or so foreign.

There were stone docks outside the walls, and a slip for landing important people. It was there they tied up and disembarked. Human dockers handled the lines and unloaded the baggage. Without being conspicuous about it, they eyed Macurdy curiously, a human of seeming consequence in the Crown Prince's entourage.

He discovered that inside the walls, buildings occupied less than half the ground. As a group they were not attractive. Individually some were, but they went together poorly, like Tudor and Bauhaus. Not that Macurdy analyzed the situation, but he sensed it. Of the ground unbuilt upon, much was paved with flagstone, while such gardens and lawns as there were, were drab with winter. The overall impact was aesthetically poor, as if the Voitusotar, or at least the imperial family, were imperceptive or didn't care.

The interiors were far better, with statuary, precious metals, stained glass, tiles, parquet, richly figured woods, paintings, tapestries, and gems. And quality construction. The designs were seldom inspired, but neither were they hodgepodges. And the buildings were centrally heated, their fireplaces supplemental or simply decorative. The small bedroom assigned to Macurdy-not shared with Rillissa-had a warm-air vent in one comer, while a closet contained a snug-lidded commode, emptied twice a day by some luckless servant, through a back panel that opened into a utility space., All in all, Macurdy was impressed.

A Voitu named Zhilnasz was his trainer, and for a time the emphasis was not on monsters, but on creating and casting plasmas, and occasionally Kurgosz tested his "German" protege. This casting of plasmas did not go well, partly because Macurdy deliberately withheld himself; he'd done better years before in Yuulith. It seemed to him that if he succeeded, Kurqosz might keep him in Hithmearc. For why would the Nazis be interested in someone who could cast a two or three-inch plasma a hundred meters-or even a few hundred meters-when they had thousands on thousands of 88mm artillery pieces and assorted larger guns, each with far greater power Nor had he forgotten Arbel's warning on the personal dangers in creating large magicks, dangers to which it seemed the Voitusotar were immune.

He also discovered that casting plasma charges was tiring, took something out of him. Casting one or two wasn't bad; that's why he hadn't noticed it before. But to cast ten or a dozen in just a few minutes left him exhausted, and the energy wasn't made up by tapping the Web of the World. Apparently it was a different energy.

After a futile and exhausting week, the nature of his training changed again, with Kurqosz showing less interest in him. Now he was to cast not plasmas but images.

These were not quasi-physical monsters, but holo-images pure and simple, images that frightened partly from their horror content and partly by breaking the victim's confidence in his own sanity. Within days, Montag could stand on a balcony, target a slave in the courtyard, and create in the man's mind the sight of headless corpses wailing; bony scrabbling hands digging their way out of the ground; decaying bodies with worm-eaten faces moving as if to embrace and kiss-the victim. Invariably the target collapsed or stood paralyzed, fell unconscious or broke and ran.

The first time, Macurdy had been pleased with himself. Then he'd realized the cruelty of the act, and the pleasure of accomplishment died.

More difficult, he learned to tart people he couldn't see, at first in rooms whose locations he knew precisely, then rooms known only approximately. In these cases, he needed to have seen the person before, and be able to visualize them. He'd already become superb at visualizing.

To the extent practical-which was very limited-Mac had used Hithmearcisc around the palace, including with Zhilnasz. Zhilnasz, of course, answered in German-his function was not language instruction-but most of the palace staff were humans, who of necessity answered Macurdy in Hithmearcisc, keeping it as simple as they could. So his small knowledge of the language improved, and meanwhile it gave him a form of recreation.

Finally the Crown Prince tested his progress in image casting, providing himself as a target in a building halfway across the palace grounds. The results validated Montag's skill; his training there was finished.

The next day, instead of being sent to Zhilnasz, Macurdy was ordered to Rillissa's suite, and as usual her demands were imperious, not to be refused. That evening before he left, she astonished him by weeping. Her father had kept them apart, she said, and the next morning Macurdy would be leaving, unlikely ever to return.

"And I love you so!" she cried.

He'd known she was fond of him, in her way, but love? Like a pet, Macurdy realized as he walked down the hall, like a favorite dog. Which at that was better than some people loved their spouse. He could feel for her-she did the best she could-but to love her was beyond him.

The next day, with Kurgosz and a surly Tsulgax, he left the palace on a barge again. The trip up the Rovenstarn and Jugnal was much slower than the trip down had been; there was the current to fight, and the beginning of spring had worsened it. He practiced his Hithmearcisc on servants and crew, and once tried it on Tsulgax, who simply glowered at him.

He saw Kurgosz only occasionally, and wondered what the crown prince did with his time. Perhaps, he thought, he spends it browsing the hive mind.

On the eleventh day they arrived at the gate hostel, and on the twelfth passed through it into Bavaria again. Bavaria and spring.