SYNOPSIS The Galactic Milieu and the Pliocene Exile The Great Intervention of 2013 opened humanity’s way to the stars. By the year 2110, when the action of the first volume in this saga began, Earthlings were fully accepted members of a benevolent confederation of planet colonizers, the Coadunate Galactic Milieu, who shared high technology and the capability of performing advanced mental operations known as metafunctions. The latter – which include telepathy, psychokinesis, and many other powers – had lurked in the human gene pool from time immemorial, but only rarely were manifest. The five founding races of the Milieu had observed humanity’s development for tens of thousands of years. After some debate, they decided to admit Earthlings to the Milieu ‘in advance of their psychosocial maturation’ because of the vast metapsychic potential of humanity, which might eventually exceed that of any other race. With the help of nonhumans, people from Earth colonized more than 700 new planets that had already been surveyed and found suitable. Earthlings also learned how to speed the development of their metapsychic powers through special training and genetic engineering. However, even though the number of humans with operant metafunctions increased with each generation, in 2110 the majority of the population was still ‘normal’ – that is, possessing metafunctions that were either meager to the point of nullity or else latent, unusable because of psychological barriers or other factors. Most of the day-to-day socio-economic activities of the Human Polity of the Milieu were carried on by ‘normals’; but human metapsychics did occupy privileged positions in government, in the sciences, and in other areas where high mental powers were valuable to the Milieu as a whole. At only one period between the Great Intervention and 2110 did it seem that the admission of humanity to the Milieu had been a mistake. This was in 2083, during the brief Metapsychic Rebellion. Instigated by a small group of Earth-based humans, this attempted coup narrowly missed destroying the entire Milieu organization. The Rebellion was suppressed by loyalist metapsychic humans and steps were taken to insure that such a disaster never would occur again. A certain number of battered rebel survivors did manage to evade retribution by passing through a unique kind of escape hatch, a one-way time-gate leading into Earth’s Pliocene Epoch, six million years in the past. The time-gate was discovered in 2034, during the heady years of the scientific knowledge-explosion subsequent to the Great Intervention. But since the time-warp opened only backward (anything attempting to return became six million years old and usually crumbled to dust), and since it had a fixed focus (a point in France’s Rhône River Valley), its discoverer sadly concluded that it was a useless oddity without practical application. After the time-gate discoverer’s death in 2041, his widow, Angélique Guderian, learned that her husband had been mistaken. The Intervention had seemed to open a Golden Age for humanity, giving it unlimited lebensraum, energy sufficiency, and membership in a splendid galaxy-wide civilization. But even Golden Ages have their misfits: in this case, humans who were temperamentally unsuited to the rather structured social environment of the Milieu. As Madame Guderian was to discover, there were fair numbers of these, and they were willing to pay handsomely to be transported to a simpler world without rules. Geologists and paleontologists knew that the Pliocene was an idyllic period, just before the dawn of rational life on our planet. Romantics and rugged individualists from almost all of Earth’s ethnic groups eventually discovered Madame’s ‘underground railroad’ to the Pliocene, which operated out of a quaint French inn located outside the metropolitan center of Lyon. From 2041 until 2106, the rejuvenated Madame Guderian transported clients from Old Earth to ‘Exile,’ a presumed natural paradise six million years younger. After suffering belated qualms of conscience about the fate of the time-travelers, Madame herself passed into the Pliocene and operation of her inn was taken over by the Milieu, which had found the time-warp to be a convenient glory hole for dissidents. By 2110, nearly 100,000 time-farers had vanished into an unknown destiny. On 25 August 2110, eight persons, making up that week’s ‘Group Green,’ were transported to Exile: Richard Voorhees, a grounded starship captain; Felice Landry, a disturbed eighteen-year-old athlete whose violent temperament and latent mind-powers had made her an outcast; Claude Majewski, a recently widowed elderly paleontologist; Sister Amerie Roccaro, a physician and burnt-out priest; Bryan Grenfell, an anthropologist following his lover, Mercy Lamballe, who had preceded him through the gate; Elizabeth Orme, a Grand Master metapsychic who had lost her stupendous mental powers after a brain trauma; Stein Oleson, a misfit planet-crust driller who dreamt of a life in a simpler world; and Aiken Drum, an engaging young crook who, like Felice, possessed considerable latent metapsychic power. Group Green discovered, as other time-travelers had before them, that idyllic Pliocene Europe was under the control of a group of maverick humanoids from another galaxy. The exotics were also exiled, having been driven from their home because of their barbarous battle-religion. The dominant exotic faction, the Tanu, were tall and handsome. In spite of a thousand-year sojourn on Earth, there were still less than 20,000 of them because their reproduction was inhibited by solar radiation. Since their plasm was compatible with that of humanity, they had for nearly seventy years utilized the time-travelers in breeding, holding Pliocene humanity in benevolent serfdom. Antagonistic to the Tanu and outnumbering them by at least four to one were their ancient foes, the Firvulag. Often called the Little People, these exotics were mostly of short stature, although there were plenty of human-sized and even gigantic individuals among them. They reproduced quite well on Pliocene Earth. Tanu and Firvulag actually constituted a dimorphic race – the former metapsychically latent, and the latter possessed of operant metafunctions, mostly limited in power. The Tanu, with their higher technology, had long ago developed mind-amplifiers, collars called golden torcs, which raised their latent mind-powers up to operancy. Firvulag did not require torcs to exercise their metafunctions. Certain of their great heroes were the mental equals of the Tanu in aggressive action, but most Firvulag were weaker. For most of the thousand years that Tanu and Firvulag resided on Earth (which they called the Many-Colored Land), they were fairly evenly matched in the ritual wars fought as part of their battle-religion. The greater finesse and technology of the Tanu tended to counterbalance the superior numbers of the cruder Firvulag. But the advent of time-traveling humanity tipped the scales in favor of the taller exotics. Not only did Tanu-human hybrids turn out to have unusual physical and mental strength, but humans also enhanced the rather decadent science establishment of the Tanu by injecting the expertise of the greatly advanced Galactic Milieu. It had been strictly forbidden for time-travelers to carry sophisticated weaponry back to the Pliocene, and the Tanu were very conservative in the types of military hardware that they permitted their human slaves to build. Nevertheless, it was human ingenuity that eventually gave the Tanu almost complete ascendency over their Firvulag foes (who never mated with humans and generally despised them). Most of the enslaved time-travelers actually lived a pretty good life under their Tanu overlords. All rough work was done by ramapithecines, small apes who wore simple torcs compelling obedience and were, ironically, part of the direct hominid line that would climax in Homo sapiens six million years in the future. Humans who occupied positions of trust or engaged in vital pursuits under the Tanu wore gray torcs. These did not amplify the mind, but did allow telepathic communication with the Tanu, who were also able to administer punishment or reward through the device. If psychological testing showed that an arriving time-traveler possessed significant latent metafunctions, the lucky person was given a silver torc. This was a genuine amplifier similar to the golden collars worn by the exotic race, but having control circuits. Silver-torc humans were accepted as conditional citizens of the Many-Colored Land. Rarely, and only if they proved themselves, the silvers might be granted golden torcs and full freedom. The expanded torc technology, developed from the original golden devices worn by the Tanu, was the fruit of a single misfit genius – Eusebio Gomez-Nolan, a human psychobiologist who was eventually granted gold and who rose to become the President of the Coercer Guild, one of the five metapsychic quasi-clans that formed the basis for Tanu society. Under the sobriquet of Lord Gomnol, Gomez-Nolan played a manipulative role in the power politics of the Many-Colored Land until he fatally overreached himself. The overall destiny of both the Tanu and the Firvulag was subtly guided by a mysterious woman who belonged to neither race but served as guardian to both. This was Brede the Shipspouse. With her mate, the Ship, a gigantic rational organism capable of intergalactic travel, she had originally brought the exotics to Pliocene Earth. Brede could foresee the future – although not perfectly – and she came to know that the destinies of Tanu, Firvulag, and time-traveling humanity were inextricably united. A pivotal point in this joint destiny was reached with the arrival of the eight members of Group Green at the Tanu reception center, Castle Gateway. It was Tanu custom to test all arriving time-travelers immediately for metapsychic latency. Latents, and those with unusual talents of other kinds, were sent south to the Tanu capital of Muriah, located on the Aven (Balearic) Peninsula in the nearly empty saline basin of the Mediterranean. Normal humans were shared out among the Tanu cities, taking their places in the working or (in the case of presentable women) breeding pools. Presorted caravans, escorted by gray-torc human troops, normally left Castle Gateway each week. Group Green proved to be anything but typical when examined by the Tanu overseers in residence, Lord Creyn and Lady Epone. Most notable was Elizabeth Orme. The trip through the time-gate had restored her to metapsychic operancy, a fact which Creyn was instantly aware of. Elizabeth’s awesome powers of farsensing and redaction (mind alteration) were convalescent; but when she recovered, it was evident that she would be far superior to any Tanu having those particular powers. Creyn predicted that a ‘wonderful life’ lay ahead for Elizabeth in the Many-Colored Land. She herself was not so sure. The Milieu had expressly forbidden the time-travel of any operant metapsychics, since such persons would be in a position to exercise unfair mental domination over normal humans in a primitive environment that lacked the mental restraints of the Milieu’s ‘Unity.’ Elizabeth was a totally nonaggressive personality as well as a self-centered one, and the only way she found to defend herself from what she regarded as a temptation to hubris was flight – either physical or mental. A second member of Group Green, the recidivist youth Aiken Drum, was found to possess powerful latencies. He was collared with a silver torc and promised that if he behaved himself (a dubious prospect) he would enjoy special privileges after being trained in Muriah. Aiken’s friend, the huge ex-driller Stein Oleson, tried to escape from imprisonment in the castle, killing several guards with his Viking axe. Stein was subdued with a controlling gray torc and was earmarked, because of his heroic physique, to become a kind of gladiator in Muriah. Richard Voorhees, the disgraced starship captain, also tried to escape. He stumbled into the chamber of the Tanu coercer Lady Epone, who brain-burned him and consigned him to a prison dormitory where other ‘normals’ awaited the departure of the weekly caravan to Epone’s city of Finiah, situated far northeast of the castle, on the River Rhine. The anthropologist Bryan Grenfell had no metapsychic latencies, but Creyn was nevertheless impressed by his professional credentials. It seemed the Tanu had a certain urgent need for a cultural anthropologist! Bryan was also destined for Muriah and accepted the prospect with equanimity, since he expected to find his beloved Mercy Lamballe in the capital. Claude Majewski, the old paleontologist, and the female priest Sister Amerie were tested and showed no latencies. But when Lady Epone attempted to test the girl Felice Landry, the little athlete seemed to go into hysterics. Her agitation made an accurate mental calibration impossible. Felice perpetrated this charade because she knew very well that she possessed very strong latent mind-powers; but she had no intention of being subjugated by a torc, especially after she discovered that both she and Sister Amerie were to be used as brood stock by the Tanu. In a private moment with the nun, Felice grimly resolved to ‘take’ the entire Tanu race. Ludicrous though this vow of revenge seemed at the time, Sister Amerie felt no inclination to doubt Felice’s ability to carry out her threat. When caravans left Castle Gateway that evening, Group Green had been split in half. Bound northward for Finiah with a sizeable group of normals were Felice, Sister Amerie, Claude, and the still groggy Richard. Six gray-torc soldiers and Lady Epone conducted the train, which rode horselike Pliocene beasts called chalikos. Also in this group were Basil, a mountain-climbing former don; Yoshimitsu and Tatsuji, who wore samurai garb reflecting their heritage; and one Dougal, who had been driven half mad by the unwelcome attentions of Lady Epone. The southbound caravan was much smaller. Led by Creyn with a minimal two-guard escort, it consisted of the unforced Elizabeth and Bryan, Aiken Drum in his silver collar, unconscious Stein wearing a gray torc, and two other latent humans who had been gifted with silver: Sukey Davies, a former juvenile officer from a colonial satellite, and Raimo Hakkinen, a glum Finno-Canadian forester. The caravan heading for Muriah took ship at the River Rhône and made a fairly uneventful trip south. Creyn proved to be a tolerant overlord, deeply sympathetic to Elizabeth. Aiken Drum and Raimo became buddies and co-conspirators, and Aiken discovered that the latencies inside his brain were unfolding at a wonderous pace that boded all kinds of fun and games. Stein recovered from wounds inflicted during the fracas at the castle, and he and Sukey pledged themselves to each other after she entered his mind and helped to heal a severe psychic trauma. In the riverside city of Darask, Elizabeth helped a human gold-torc woman, Estella-Sirone, give birth to twins – one Tanu and one Firvulag. And when the party eventually arrived in Muriah, they were greeted by a triumphal procession of magnificent Tanu chivalry, all clad in glowing, multicolored glass armor. The welcome was primarily for Elizabeth, who was soon to discover herself a pawn between several scheming factions at the Tanu court. Meanwhile, on the trail north of Castle Gateway, the other four members of Group Green were plotting a prisoner revolt. Felice, a professional athlete, was abnormally strong, and her latent metapsychic powers enabled her to mind-control animals. She also had a small steel dagger, little more than a toy, which had been overlooked by searchers. When the caravan reached a remote shore of the Lac de Bresse, Felice’s plan for escape was put into action. Richard, disguised in Amerie’s religious garb, surprised the head guard and stabbed him to death. Then Felice compelled the caravan’s escorting pack of huge bear-dogs to attack Lady Epone and the other soldiers. In the ensuing fray, the samurai Tatsuji was killed, as well as the entire escort of gray troops. Richard approached Epone, thinking that she, too, was dead. But the exotic woman seized him with her powerful mind, in spite of the fact that she was nearly torn to pieces. Richard would have perished had he not stabbed her with Felice’s little dagger. (Much later, the nun, who was a physician, deduced that the nearly invulnerable Tanu were fatally poisoned by iron weapons. For this reason, they had proscribed the use of iron in Pliocene Europe, making do with copper alloys and a kind of supertough glass, vitredur, in its place.) Felice coveted Epone’s golden torc, knowing that the mental amplifier was capable of releasing the great metafaculties now locked within her brain. But before she could take the torc from the Tanu woman’s body, mad Dougal grabbed it and threw it into the lake. Amerie had to drug Felice with a sedative to prevent her from killing Dougal. Bewildered and frightened, the ex-prisoners realized that news of the fight must have been telepathically flashed by the dying Epone to the nearest fort. They would have to disperse quickly. One group elected to follow Basil, the ex-don. They would sail in small boats down the Lac de Bresse to the Jura Mountains. Claude, the 133-year-old paleontologist, was more wilderness-wise after years of roughing it on wild planets in the Milieu. He advised his friends of Group Green to avoid the open lake and instead head into the heavily forested Vosges Mountains, which were much closer than the Jura. The surviving samurai warrior, Yosh, decided to go his way alone, heading north in hopes of reaching the sea. The large group of escapees out on the lake was eventually almost entirely recaptured and taken in chains to the city of Finiah. But Claude, Richard, Amerie, and Felice went deep into the Vosges, where they finally made contact with a group of free outlaw humans, fugitives from Tanu settlements, who called themselves Lowlives. The Lowlife leader was an old woman, Angélique Guderian, former keeper of the time-gate and the ultimate author of Pliocene humanity’s degradation. Around her neck was a golden torc, the gift of the Firvulag, those deadly enemies of the Tanu, who had formed a very tentative alliance with the Lowlives. Madame had modest metapsychic powers. The killing of Epone by the escapees was unprecedented. Never before had a mere human been able to bring about the demise of one of the tough exotics, who normally enjoyed life spans of hundreds of years. Tanu searchers, under Lord Velteyn of Finiah, now swarmed the Vosges region, looking for the ones who had done the deed. The remnant of Group Green, together with Madame Guderian and some 200 Lowlives, hid in a great hollow tree until things should cool off. Inside the refuge, Madame explained to the newcomers her great plan to free Pliocene humanity from the Tanu yoke, a task she had undertaken in order to expiate her own guilt. Madame’s deputy, a Native American named Peopeo Moxmox Burke, who had once been a judge, was keenly interested in Amerie’s theory about the deadliness of iron to the exotic race. This might be an invaluable secret weapon in the liberation of humanity. A friendly Firvulag named Fitharn Pegleg joined the Lowlives inside their sanctuary and told Group Green the legend of the Ship’s Grave. The great space-going organism that was Brede’s mate had died in making the leap from its home galaxy to our own. Tanu and Firvulag, passengers in the Ship led by Brede, escaped from the hulk in small flying machines just before it impacted upon the Earth, making a great crater known as the Ship’s Grave. For some time, Lowlives, working with Firvulag, had searched for this ancient site. Even though a thousand years had passed, it was possible that some of the sophisticated flying machines left at the Grave might still be operational. And inside one of them, entombed after a ritual duel, was the body of Lugonn, Shining Hero of the Tanu, together with his sacred weapon, the Spear. The latter was not a blade, but rather a photonic projector that delivered laserlike blasts of energy. This Spear, in the hands of Lowlife humanity, could turn the balance of power. Madame’s people had looked in vain for the Ship’s Grave. But Claude, knowledgable in future geology, told them that the crater could only be the astrobleme known as the Ries, located some 300 kilometers to the east, beyond the Black Forest, on the northern shore of the Danube River. It was decided to mount a new expedition at once. With luck, the searchers might return before the end of September. The Firvulag would then join humanity in a joint attack against the city of Finiah – provided that the fighting took place before the start of the Grand Combat Truce, which began at dawn on 1 October. Unknown to Fitharn, who agreed to accompany the party, the Lowlives who remained behind intended to go to another site designated by Claude, where they hoped iron ore might be found. They would smelt whatever iron they could and then forge weapons to be used in the Finiah attack. The iron was to be kept a secret from the Firvulag, since Madame was dubious of their loyalty. After receiving permission from Yeochee IV, King of the Firvulag, the expedition set out. It comprised Madame Guderian, Richard, Felice, Chief Burke, a former aircraft technician named Stefanko, a dynamic-field engineer named Martha, and Fitharn. Felice was especially anxious to go. She was certain that the body of the ancient hero, Lugonn, would have a golden torc about its neck that she could appropriate. Disaster struck the party even before it reached the Black Forest. In a Rhineside swamp, a giant pig killed Stefanko and badly wounded Chief Burke. Frail Martha, who had borne four children in quick succession as a Tanu slave, began to hemorrhage from the shock. It seemed that the expedition would have to be abandoned. But Martha insisted that she would recover, and Felice agreed to carry the sick woman if need be. Martha was a vital member of the group, now the only one with the technical skill to put the photon Spear and/or a flyer into operation once the expedition found them. The Firvulag Fitharn agreed to take Chief Burke back to the Lowlife village of Hidden Springs, where Amerie was recuperating from a broken arm. After many vicissitudes, the reduced expedition crossed the Black Forest range and came into the territory of a certain Sugoll. Only nominally under the authority of the Firvulag King, Sugoll ruled a large band of grotesque mutant Firvulag called Howlers. His own hideously deformed body was hidden beneath a handsome illusion. Sugoll at first scorned to assist the expedition and threatened to kill the humans. But when Claude pointed out the source of Howler deformity – radioactive rocks among which they had lived for many generations – the ruler relented. Claude hinted that the Howlers might relieve their plight by seeking help from human geneticists – if such persons were released from Tanu slavery. The liberation of humanity (and helping out the expedition) was thus to the Howler advantage. Sugoll finally agreed to assist the party in finding the River Danube, on which the humans could easily voyage to the Ship’s Grave. Once again the four travelers set off. On 22 September they arrived at last at the crater. Richard and Martha, who had become lovers, set about repairing one of the flying machines and the great Spear. Felice, after a fit of rage brought on by her discovery that Lugonn’s skeleton had no golden torc, calmed herself and was a model of cooperation. Even so, time was getting desperately short if they were to meet the deadline before the Grand Combat Truce. Martha’s old affliction returned and she grew dangerously weak from loss of blood; but she would not let them return to Hidden Springs until the testing of the photon weapon was complete. Meanwhile, a great Firvulag army had gathered on the bank of the Rhine opposite the Tanu city of Finiah. Additionally, several hundred Lowlives had been recruited from scattered wilderness hamlets and surreptitiously armed with iron. At dusk on the twenty-ninth the flyer finally landed at Hidden Springs with the Spear ready for use. But Martha was in shock from hemorrhaging, and Amerie could only rush her away for transfusions and pray for a miracle. The distraught Richard could not even remain with his beloved; he had to pilot the flyer in its bombardment of Finiah. Screened by Madame Guderian’s limited metapsychic power, the flyer hovered over the city while Claude blasted holes in both city walls. Then he turned the Spear on Finiah’s barium mine, the only source in the Many-Colored Land of the element that was vital in making all kinds of torcs. The mine was destroyed, and waves of Firvulag, wearing the illusory shapes of hideous monsters, invaded the city alongside Chief Burke and his Lowlife forces. After a desperate fight, Finiah fell. Its surviving Tanu populace, including the ruler, Lord Velteyn, filed in the direction of Castle Gateway. The erstwhile human slaves (some of whom had been quite content in their bondage) were given the choice of freedom or death. Those wearing gray or silver torcs had to submit to their removal with an iron chisel, a painful process that left many of them in a state of profound nervous collapse. Both Claude and Madame were wounded by bolts of Veltyn’s psychoenergy during the air attack. Richard lost the sight of one eye, but managed to return the flyer safely to Hidden Springs. There he discovered that Martha had died. Mad with grief, he took her body and soared away in the gravomagnetically powered aircraft, to wait for his own death in an orbit thousands of kilometers above Pliocene Earth. Below, Felice was walking toward the ruins of Finiah. She bitterly regretted missing the war; but she knew that she would find her long-sought golden torc somewhere in the devastated city, and then she would attain the powers needed to fulfill her vow to destroy the Tanu race. Felice finally did find a torc; it raised to operancy her latent powers of farsensing, psychokinesis, coercion, and creativity. Some time would have to elapse before she learned to use these powers correctly, and so she returned to Hidden Springs in order to assist Madame Guderian in the next phases of the liberation of humanity. Meanwhile, far to the south in the Tanu capital of Muriah, the other four members of Group Green encountered an utterly different face of the Many-Colored Land. Upon their arrival, the Green quartet and their fellow humans, Raimo and Sukey, were presented to the Tanu aristocracy at a lavish feast. Elizabeth learned from Thagdal the High King that she was to be taken to Brede Shipspouse in order to be initiated into Tanu ways – an unprecedented honor. After the initiation, which might take a month, she would be impregnated by the King and found a new dynasty of full operant (i.e., torcless) Tanu-human hybrids. Queen Nontusvel seemed entirely agreeable to this arrangement and Elizabeth herself showed no emotion as Thagdal unfolded his plans. The other honored prisoners learned their own fates. Bryan the anthropologist was commanded to make a careful study of the impact of humanity’s advent upon the Tanu socio-economy. A certain faction, headed by Nodonn Battlemaster, the most powerful son of Thagdal and Nontusvel and heir presumptive, maintained that the coming of humanity had been detrimental to Tanu culture rather than beneficial, as Thagdal and most of the Tanu aristocracy believed. Bryan, using the advanced analytical methods of the Milieu, was to settle the matter. It went without saying that Thagdal felt confident that Bryan would confirm the royal policy. The gigantic Viking Stein, Raimo Hakkinen, and Sukey Davies were forced to display their talents before the company. Sukey’s silver torc had activated a powerful latent faculty of redaction. She would be apprenticed to the Redactor Guild, headed by the compassionate and civilized Dionket, and learn the art of mental healing. Poor Raimo, who possessed only a weak psychokinetic power, found out that he was destined to become the sexual plaything of Tanu women, who found it difficult to conceive by their own males. Stein was presented to the festal throng as a gladiatorial candidate for the Grand Combat, the annual ritual war between the Tanu and Firvulag in which certain humans also participated. Stein was about to be auctioned off to the highest Tanu bidder when an incredible event threw the entire mass of Tanu aristocracy into a turmoil. Aiken Drum put in his bid for Stein. This charming young rogue’s awesome latent mind powers had been released in a psychic torrent by the donning of the silver torc. So great was the power of Aiken’s liberated mind that he had actually burned out the control circuits of the silver torc. He was now in the process of going fully operant – metafunctional without artificial augmentation. Only Elizabeth, who had been a master-class teacher of young metapsychics back in the Milieu, knew what was happening. The Tanu realized that Aiken Drum was far above the usual type of human latent; but they were not yet aware just how menacing his potential would be. As the Tanu nobles began to bid for his friend Stein, Aiken was aware that the big Viking was in mortal danger. Not only had Stein taken Sukey as his life-mate (an action that the Tanu deemed treason for a silver-torc woman), but he was also one of those individuals who is fundamentally incompatible to the torc’s operation. If Stein wore his gray collar for very long, he would go mad and sink into death. Most humans who wore gray were tested for compatibility before being torced. Stein had received his collar as a means of subjection after his bloody battle in Castle Gateway. The Tanu did not really care how long he lived. Aiken, however, did; and so he entered the bidding against the Tanu, pledging to the King that as payment he would dispose of a Firvulag monster, a certain Delbaeth, who had been terrorizing the adjacent Spanish mainland. The King was stunned, not only by Aiken’s audacity but also by the glimpse of power he had perceived upon brief examination of the young trickster’s mind. It hardly seemed possible . . . and yet this little human mountebank, who wore a gold-fabric suit all covered with pockets, just might be a threat to Thagdal himself. The King’s sense of hovering doom was reinforced when a member of the Tanu High Table, Mayvar Kingmaker, the head of the Farsensor Guild, declared that she was in favor of Aiken’s bid and would see that he was trained for the task as her protégé. Thagdal viewed Mayvar as a mischievous old crone who might simply be making a gesture. On the other hand, she was not called ‘Kingmaker’ for nothing . . . Shaken, Thagdal accepted Aiken’s bid for Stein. Delbaeth was a menace that the King should have dealt with long ago, and now the monarch was backed into a corner by the wily human’s maneuver. Both Aiken and Stein would be introduced to Tanu chivalric practice by the Lord of Swords, and then they and a large troop of knights would go on a Quest against the formidable Delbaeth. Following the portentous banquet, there was desperate reactive scheming among the so-called Host of Nontusvel – children of Thagdal and the reigning Queen. Thagdal had had other wives during his two-millennium lifetime, and he had had thousands of other children by both Tanu and human women, since his germ plasm was considered peerless. (This was the basis for his sovereignty.) But the Host considered themselves to be the elite, and had long entertained dynastic aspirations contrary to ancient Tanu custom. The Host leader was Nodonn, greatest battle hero of the Tanu, head of the Psychokinetic Guild, and ruler of Goriah, a rich city situated on the coast of Armorica (Brittany). Unlike his totipotent father, however, Nodonn suffered from a reproductive handicap. His offspring, who were not numerous, did not display important metapsychic powers. Nodonn was a member of the Tanu hierarchy, the High Table, as were other Host notables such as the twins Fian and Kuhal, who shared the post of Second Lord Psychokinetic; Culluket the Interrogator, Second Redactor to Dionket; Imidol the Second Coercer, who was the reluctant subordinate to the human Coercer Guild President Gomnol; and Riganone, a female warrior who intended to challenge old Mayvar for leadership of the Farsensors. There were some 200 other members of the Host, but not all of them were first-class mental powers, nor did the Host have a majority of High Table seats. But their dynasty might attain supreme power if Nodonn succeeded Thagdal. Now, however, this succession seemed to be endangered: not by Aiken Drum, whom the Host dismissed as a mere metapsychic nova who would burn out almost as soon as he flared up – but by Elizabeth. If King Thagdal had fully operant children by her, these would undoubtedly form the nucleus of a hybrid elite, more powerful physically and mentally than the pureblooded Tanu. The scheme to use Elizabeth in breeding had been proposed to the King by Gomnol. The Host rightly suspected that this devious human Coercer Lord intended to make a place for himself in any new order that included human operants. After anxious consultation, the leaders of the Host decided that Elizabeth would have to die. This would not be easy to accomplish, since she was an operant Grand Master whom no single Tanu could overcome by means of mental attack. If the Host acted together, however, using the multi-mind thrust called metapsychic concert, they might be able to destroy her. (Unfortunately for this plan, the individualistic Tanu found such cooperation to be very difficult. Only under the most firm coordination could they achieve metapsychic concert. Culluket the redactor and Imidol the coercer would finally succeed in organizing the effort.) Several weeks passed. Elizabeth was subjected to rather inept attacks by the Host. Knowing that the attacks would increase in effectiveness, she escaped by accompanying Brede Shipspouse into the latter’s room without doors, a chamber proof against mind penetration. Brede had plans of her own for Elizabeth that had nothing to do with the schemes of Thagdal, Gomnol, or the Host. The Shipspouse, guardian of both the Tanu and Firvulag races, perceived Elizabeth as one who might lead them (as Brede apparently could not) out of their barbarous and feckless battle-culture into a truly civilized society of the mind. Elizabeth was in no mood for Brede’s large-hearted hopes. She was sunk in despair, feeling that she was the only metapsychic adult in a population of malignant children, who had no response to a superior being other than trying to kill it out of fear. Elizabeth rejected any thought of spiritual motherhood or sharing Brede’s guardian role. All she wanted, she told the Shipspouse, was to sail away in the great red balloon she had brought with her to the Pliocene: to sail away and be left alone, at peace. Aiken Drum, under the tutelage of Mayvar Kingmaker, became more and more adept in the use of his metafunctions. Mayvar gave him his initiate’s golden torc; but he was quick to show the elderly Tanu woman that he had no need of any artificial amplifier. He would wear the torc to deceive the other Tanu, however. Mayvar also gave Aiken a certain simple device that she guaranteed would give him victory over the monster Delbaeth – provided he could use the weapon without any Tanu member of the Quest finding out about it. Stein, too, received training as a Tanu man-at-arms. He worried about Sukey, separated from him as she prepared to begin her redactor apprenticeship. Stein’s fears were confirmed when he perceived a telepathic cry of fear emanate from his wife. He rushed to the headquarters of the Redactor Guild and found her recovering from an operation. A traitorous human physician, Tasha-Bybar, had reversed the sterilization procedure obligatory to all time-traveling women, making Sukey ready for King Thagdal’s droit du seigneur. (Tasha, a great heroine to the Tanu, had perfected this restoration of fertility, making possible the Tanu breeding scheme that utilized human women. Her students did their work in each Tanu city as female newcomers arrived. Because of the female sterilization requirement originally promulgated by Madame Guderian, only one-fourth as many women as men elected to time-travel to the Pliocene.) Stein was reunited with Sukey – only to discover that the infamous Tasha was spying upon them. Realizing by Sukey’s telepathic confession what Tasha had done – not only to his own wife but to thousands of other human women – Stein killed the doctor on the spot. His deed was discovered by the redactor Creyn, who seemed oddly sympathetic. Creyn promised to conceal their part in Tasha’s death, giving Stein and Sukey the first hint of the existence of a Peace Faction among the normally bellicose Tanu. This group cherished the heretical notion that one day Tanu and Firvulag would be brothers in sun as well as in shadow. At the September Sport Meeting in Muriah, both Aiken and Stein were required to display their fighting prowess in the arena, before the grand and petty nobility of the Many-Colored Land. If the pair passed muster, they would be accepted as members of the Tanu battle-company and the Delbaeth Quest would proceed. Stein fought first and dispatched a monstrous hyenalike animal with his battleaxe. Then it was Aiken’s turn. His antagonist was a species of crocodile seventeen meters long. It had been brought to the Muriah arena just for him by Nodonn Battlemaster, who had recognized Aiken as a force to be reckoned with. The anthropologist Bryan Grenfell had been spending his days studying Tanu culture in company with a genial hybrid, Ogmol. On the night of Aiken’s testing, Bryan was in the royal box together with the King and Queen; Aluteyn Craftsmaster, the President of the Creator Guild; the fey human Genetics Master Greg-Donnet (né Gregory Prentice Brown); and other notables. Bryan was introduced to Nodonn upon the Battlemaster’s arrival; but he had eyes only for Nodonn’s new wife, Lady Rosmar – who was none other than the bewitching Mercy Lamballe, Bryan’s own love-at-first-sight, whom he had helplessly followed to the Pliocene. Mercy now wore a golden torc and had developed tremendous psychocreative powers. In the arena, Aiken met the giant crocodile. Astride a chaliko, wearing golden glass armor and armed only with a glass lance, the trickster was terrified. He lost control of his mount and was thrown to the sand. The rules permitted no use of overt mental power against the beast, but Aiken eventually conquered it, using only his native cunning. The Tanu spectators went wild at his bold performance. King Thagdal and Nodonn had a more chilly response. Having proved themselves, Aiken and Stein now undertook the Delbaeth Quest. The expedition consisted of several hundred knights and was led by the King himself. Nodonn was there to keep an eye on Aiken. Two High Table members, Tanu-human hybrids of great mental power, became partisans of the trickster. They were Alberonn Mindeater and Bleyn the Champion. The colorful troop began the Quest at the large city of Afaliah, at the base of the Aven Peninsula. Its crusty old lord, Celadeyr, no particular friend of the Host, was nevertheless scornful of the notion that a human such as Aiken might get the better of the awful Delbaeth. For three weeks the Quest chased the monster, who bombarded the knights with lethal fireballs and effectively kept them at a distance. Finally the Firvulag disappeared into a vast network of caverns out on the Gibraltar Isthmus, and King Thagdal and Nodonn demanded that Aiken admit he was beaten. Aiken refused. He and Stein stripped themselves of their glass armor and prepared to follow Delbaeth underground. By law, the Quest had to end in three days, when the Grand Combat Truce would begin and Tanu and Firvulag would forswear fighting until the start of the ritual war. Aiken demanded that he be allowed those three days; and supported by his partisans, he was given his chance. Using his psychocreative power, Aiken turned himself and Stein into bats and they flew into the depths. They encountered Delbaeth two days later and killed him by means of the secret device Mayvar had given Aiken. Just before they left the Firvulag’s cave, Stein pointed out to Aiken that the waters of the Atlantic were pounding against the western wall. The narrow Gibraltar Isthmus, forming a sill between Spain and Africa, was all that separated the ocean from the deep empty basin of the Mediterranean. With the start of the month-long Truce, both Tanu and Firvulag from all parts of the Many-Colored Land began to converge on Muriah’s White Silver Plain, a large salt flat where tent cities, grandstands, lists, and the battlefield for the Combat proper were located. Because they had adopted war-mounts and other human innovations, the Tanu had won the Grand Combat for forty years running, and the Firvulag had become more and more bitter. However, the recent fall of Finiah cheered the Little People – and inspired them to adopt a few Low-life fighting customs themselves in hopes of changing their luck. The new tactics were opposed by the old Firvulag Battlemaster, Pallol One-Eye; but he was forced to bow to the will of the younger generals Sharn and Ayfa, a husband-and-wife team. In the Lowlife village of Hidden Springs, Madame Guderian discussed her plan for liberating humanity from the Tanu yoke. Phase One had been successful. Finiah with its barium mine was a deserted ruin. Phase Two would be more audacious. Under cover of the Truce, a small group of Lowlives would infiltrate the torc factory down in Muriah and sabotage the irreplaceable machinery. The undertaking would be hazardous in the extreme, since the factory was situated inside the fortresslike Coercer Guild complex, presided over by the renegade human, Lord Gomnol. Phase Three involved the permanent closing of the time-gate. Madame had a plan for doing this herself, and Claude insisted upon helping her. An implied fourth phase of the liberation involved the making of iron weapons by humanity. It was arranged that the freed human population of Finiah, as well as some of the Lowlives who had come from other parts of Europe to join in the Finiah fight, would found several Iron Villages. They would mine, smelt, and forge the ‘blood metal’ in preparation for the ultimate bid for human freedom. Eleven people, including Madame and the Group Green survivors, left Hidden Springs to implement Phases Two and Three. They were disguised as loyalist human refugees from Finiah. At the city of Roniah, Madame and Claude separated from the others and went off to hide near Castle Gateway, while the others proceeded south to the capital. The two groups would try to synchronize strikes against the time-gate and torc factory. The Muriah-bound group included Felice, Sister Amerie, Chief Burke, the alpinist don Basil Wimborne (liberated from a Finiah prison), and five other dedicated Lowlives. Felice’s metapsychic powers were developing nicely and the longer she wore her golden torc, the stronger her mental faculties became. She also carried the photonic Spear. It had been totally discharged in the Finiah fight, but the saboteurs hoped that their former Group Green companion, Aiken Drum, would find some way of putting it back into action. As the group approached the Tanu capital, a telepathic call was sent to Aiken, telling him of the Lowlife conspiracy. The saboteurs took for granted that Aiken would be loyal to humanity and eager to assist them. But they were wrong. Down in Muriah, Aiken and Stein and Elizabeth learned at the same time of the impending assaults on the torc works and the time-gate. Elizabeth had reluctantly helped Brede attain metapsychic operancy; but she was still determined to escape from Muriah in her red balloon and live alone. Stein eagerly welcomed the prospect of a strike against the Tanu; but Aiken feared that the exotics would read Stein’s simple mind and discover the plot, and so he and his new ally Gomnol (who professed to be sympathetic to humanity) put a mind-block into the big Viking. Neither Gomnol nor Aiken anticipated that Stein would leak the sabotage plot to his redactor wife, Sukey. The alliance between Aiken and Gomnol Lord Coercer was a devious one. Neither man really trusted the other, but they had been forced into a coalition of necessity. Aiken aspired to be King of the Many-Colored Land and would need plenty of help to fulfill his ambition. Gomnol, cordially hated by the present heir to the throne, Nodonn, knew that his previous position of strength as a supporter of King Thagdal was crumbling. The Tanu monarch was on a downhill slide and might very well take Gomnol with him. The King had believed that the Tanu race benefited by the admixture of human genes and the utilization of human technology. But now Bryan Grenfell’s cultural survey, recently completed but still secret, showed that humans would eventually dominate the Many-Colored Land if Thagdal’s policy continued. The King suspected (correctly) that his eldest son Nodonn planned to use the survey to discredit him publicly during the Grand Combat. Additionally, the King had suffered another blow to his prestige when Brede forbade the implementation of Gomnol’s mating scheme between Thagdal and Elizabeth. Elizabeth was now taboo, and the King would not become the father of an operant super-race as he had hoped. On the contrary, that honor might very likely fall to Aiken Drum! Sunk in despair, Thagdal confided his fears to Queen Nontusvel, who knew just what kind of diversion would cheer her spouse. By royal command, she demanded that Sukey be given to the King. Dionket was forced to yield the young woman up. As Thagdal took his pleasure, Sukey let slip a vengeful thought about the northern saboteurs soon to invade Muriah. The Queen overheard this thought and notified Nodonn’s brother Culluket the Interrogator, a sinister and powerful member of the Host faction. Culluket wrung from Sukey all that Stein had inadvertently told her of the plot, with the result that Stein and Sukey were both condemned and thrown into prison to await death at the Combat’s finale. Aiken, even though he was known to be Stein’s close friend, managed to convince Culluket that he knew nothing of the plot. But the Host continued to believe that both Aiken and Gomnol were in league with the Lowlife conspirators. Meanwhile, the party of saboteurs had reached Muriah and were ready to strike. They called Aiken to their hiding place and rather reluctantly turned the inoperative Spear over to him. He promised to attempt to recharge it, but really had no intention of giving it back to the saboteurs. It was to be a key element in his own schemes later. When Aiken failed to return at the appointed hour with the Spear, the Lowlife party began its penetration without him, trusting that Felice’s growing metapsychic powers would be strong enough to destroy the torc factory. The Lowlives entered the Coercer Guild complex in disguise. Felice melted the factory door with a bolt of mental energy – only to find that some sixty knights of the Host, led by Imidol the Second Coercer and Culluket the Interrogator, were waiting in ambush. The humans managed to kill fifteen Tanu, either with iron weapons or with Felice’s mindbolts. But the girl herself was eventually stunned, and the rest of the saboteurs, saving only Sister Amerie, Chief Burke, and Basil, were killed. The torc factory was undamaged. Gomnol arrived when the fighting was over and coolly told the Host that he had everything in hand. But they refused to believe his protestations of innocence. Having improved their teamwork in metapsychic concert during the futile attacks on Elizabeth, they now combined to mindblast Gomnol to death, knowing that the terrible Felice would be blamed. The girl was then divested of her golden torc and taken off by Culluket for interrogation. The other three saboteurs, badly wounded, were cast into the same prison as Stein and Sukey to await the end. Far to the north of Muriah, in the vicinity of the time-gate at Castle Gateway, Madame Guderian and Claude prepared to act. They had made message holders from amber, a material known to pass successfully through the reversed time-warp, and enclosed notes warning the twenty-second-century operators to halt all time travel because of the enslaving of humans by the Tanu. As the sun rose, the two old people, rendered invisible by Madame’s metapsychic power, rushed toward the gate area. High in the sky, Aiken was searching for them. He did not want the time-gate closed, since this would deprive him of potential subjects once he became King. Before Aiken could spot his quarry he was seized by a miniature tornado and flung far away. He had been anticipated by Nodonn – who had plans of his own for the old couple. As Claude and Madame approached the gate, the image of Nodonn filled their minds. He was not there to stop them, but to explain why he was permitting them to succeed. Because of Tanu popular sentiment, Nodonn had not dared to close the time-gate himself; yet he knew that it posed a mortal threat to his race’s survival. He now told Claude and Madame that they must do their work visibly, so that there would be no doubt where the responsibility for the gate’s closure lay. Then he let them go. Hand in hand, the two old people stepped into the recycling time-warp and returned to the twenty-second century. Their bodies crumbled to dust, but the amber message holders survived. The time-gate was shut down forthwith. Now the time of the Grand Combat had almost arrived. The petty nobility of the Tanu showed a strange liking for Aiken Drum, and his kingly aspirations had become a very serious matter. Also, he now had the photonic Spear in working order. This sacred weapon had last been used officially in a duel of two great heroes back at the Ship’s Grave, when Tanu and Firvulag first arrived on Earth a thousand years earlier. The Tanu hero Bright Lugonn had wielded the Spear; the Firvulag hero Sharn the Atrocious had used a similar laserlike weapon called the Sword. In later years, the Sword had been used as the Grand Combat trophy and currently it was in the care of Nodonn Battlemaster. Aiken’s possession of the Spear gave a further air of legitimacy to his aspiration. According to Tanu chivalric usage, Aiken would be permitted to fight Nodonn, Spear to Sword, if he managed to attract a suitable number of adherents during the Grand Combat. A threat to Aiken now materialized from a strange source: his friend Stein. Suffering in prison with Sukey, who had miscarried of their son, Stein’s mind was failing under the malignant influence of his gray torc. At the same time, the mental block installed by Gomnol began to weaken. It seemed that Stein would unwittingly betray Aiken’s link with the saboteurs and his conspiracy with the late human Lord Coercer. Resisting the temptation to kill Stein and Sukey, Aiken begged Mayvar to get the pair out of Muriah, beyond the range of the Host’s mental snooping. Mayvar agreed to this, then went to a meeting of the clandestine Tanu Peace Faction, which hoped that Aiken would succeed in his bid for the kingship and bring a new era of peace and civilization to the Many-Colored Land. Besides Mayvar, the Peace Faction included the hybrid High Table members Bleyn, Alberonn, and Katlinel the Darkeyed (who announced that she was betrothed to none other than Sugoll, ruler of the Howlers), Dionket the Lord Healer, Creyn, and two banished Tanu stalwarts who might play special roles in the upcoming Grand Combat. One of these was Leyr, father of the hybrid Katlinel, who had been Lord Coercer before being deposed by Gomnol. Now that the latter was dead and his post vacant, the Host would put Imidol forward as a presidential candidate. The Peace Faction urged Leyr to challenge young Imidol in order to keep the Coercer Guild from Host control. Leyr was much older, but it was known that Imidol was weaker than Gomnol, so there seemed a slim chance that Leyr might win. The other banished Tanu present at the secret meeting was Minanonn the Heretic. Five hundred years before, he had been Battlemaster. But his pacifistic temperament was antithetical to the barbaric Tanu battle-religion, and he had been forced into exile deep in the Pyrénées. The Peace Faction hoped that, in the event Aiken defeated Nodonn, Minanonn would fight against Kuhal Earthshaker for the presidency of the Psychokinetic Guild. However, Minanonn refused to compromise his principles. Leyr did agree to go up against Imidol. Later that same night, on a mountain above Muriah, Elizabeth and her great hot-air balloon awaited the arrival of Creyn. He was to bring Stein and Sukey to her and the balloon would carry all three to safety. But when the Tanu redactor arrived, he brought not two people but three. Curled up unconscious in the carriage was Felice. Creyn had found her in a cell next to the others, near death after torture by Culluket. Felice, like Stein, now wore a gray torc. But Sukey had been given a pair of iron shears to remove the devices once they were safely off the ground. There was only one problem: The balloon gondola carried only three. Elizabeth was despairing and furious. Both Brede and Dionket had pleaded with her to remain with them, doing important work that only a Grand Master metapsychic such as herself was capable of. But Elizabeth did not want the responsibility – especially if it meant that the Host would never relent in trying to kill her. Faced with the wretched Felice, Stein, and Sukey, she felt caught in the Shipspouse’s web. Finally, Elizabeth sent the three freed prisoners away in her balloon. Then she returned to Brede’s room without doors and withdrew into a fiery mental cocoon that isolated her from all other minds. The First Day of the Combat began. It was a day of bloodless sporting events and ceremony. Mercy came to watch the thrilling contests with Bryan, who was literally dying for love of her. Then she left him in order to challenge old Aluteyn Craftsmaster for the presidency of the Creator Guild. At the same time, the balloon carrying Felice, Stein, and Sukey drifted westward and landed alongside the Long Fjord east of Mt. Alborán. Felice recovered her senses – and more. In his tortures, Culluket had unwittingly duplicated a drastic mind-altering technique that Elizabeth had used on Brede to raise her to operancy; now Felice had gone operant, too. She no longer needed a torc in order to exercise her metapsychic powers; and these powers, at least the destructive aspects of psychokinesis and creativity, were greater than those of any other person in the world. Felice was finally in a position to take revenge on the Tanu. Her plan was to blast open the Gibraltar Isthmus with psychoenergy, letting the Atlantic flood the empty Mediterranean Basin. The battleground of the White Silver Plain below Muriah was well below sea level. It did not bother Felice that thousands of Firvulag and humans would also drown in the cataclysm. She did not trust the Firvulag protestations of friendship (neither had Madame Guderian), and most of the humans in Muriah were creatures of the Tanu. In order to implement her plan, Felice required Stein’s help. As an ex-driller of the Earth’s crust, he had the technical knowledge to instruct her where to blast. At first, Stein refused to consider Felice’s terrible scheme. He had no grudge against the Tanu – none, that is, worth such a hideous retribution. At that point, Felice triumphantly told Stein that King Thagdal was responsible for Sukey’s miscarriage, the guilt for which Stein had mistakenly borne himself. In his rage, Stein gave Felice all the help she needed. He showed her how to seal the fjord so that a head of water would build up in the Alborán Basin. Then he had her begin to blast open the Gibraltar Isthmus. Powerful as she was, Felice faltered before the job was complete. In her extremity of hatred, Felice prayed help from whatever powers of darkness might exist – and the help came from somewhere, and she was able to open the Gibraltar Gate at last. A monstrous cascade of seawater began to fill the Alborán Basin, backing up behind a loose rubble dam near the Long Fjord. On the Second Day of the Grand Combat, the culminating event was the selection of the Combat leaders by means of a manifestation of powers. The nine Firvulag leaders of long standing were unchallenged and accepted by acclamation. Wicked old Pallol One-Eye, the Firvulag Battlemaster, gave a demonstration of his formidable metapsychic power. The selection of Tanu leaders was not so orderly. Things began tamely enough when Bleyn, Alberonn, Lady Bunone Warteacher, and Tagan Lord of Swords stood forth unchallenged. And then Dionket appointed Culluket his deputy, as was expected; and Nodonn similarly deputized his brother Kuhal Earthshaker since he himself would serve as Battlemaster. But a furor broke out when Gomnol’s empty place was claimed by both Imidol and the exiled Leyr. The two agreed to duel for the coercer leadership on the field of battle rather than to manifest powers at that time. Then it was the turn of Aluteyn Craftsmaster, Lord of the Creators. He was challenged by Mercy, and in the subsequent manifestation she was victorious. Rather than banishment, proud Aluteyn chose death. He went off to a huge glass vessel called the Great Retort, in which those condemned to die at the Combat’s end awaited their fate. Mercy, the new Lady Creator, declined to fight in the Combat. She deputized Velteyn, erstwhile Lord of devastated Finiah, as her champion. The final Tanu leader to stand forth was Mayvar, President of the Farsensors. She chose Aiken as her deputy rather than the Host’s nominee, Riganone. After King Thagdal designated Nodonn as Battlemaster, all of the company retired to feasting and entertainment. Tomorrow the actual Combat would begin, lasting for two and a half days with only a few recesses. During that time, the sump behind the rubble dam across the Mediterranean Basin would fill with ever-deepening water . . . The last, fateful psychocreative blast that had let in the sea also caused Felice to fall from the balloon. Stein and Sukey could find no trace of the girl. After cutting off his wife’s silver torc so she could not transmit a telepathic warning to Muriah, Stein guided the balloon into a northerly current of air and soared far away, heading for freedom in a remote part of France. The only person at the Grand Combat with an intimation of approaching disaster was the deposed Creator, Aluteyn Craftsmaster. As the Grand Combat proper began, he perceived subtle geophysical hints of the encroaching sea and tried to give warning while imprisoned inside the Great Retort. He was ignored. Tanu and Firvulag met in their ritual war with no thought except for their ancient rivalry. The human Raimo Hakkinen, forced to take part in the battle, was rescued from slaughter by Aiken Drum. Then Raimo attempted to desert, but he was found out and condemned to the Retort for cowardice. Unlike the previous forty Grand Combats, which the Tanu had won easily, this contest showed signs of being a squeaker. The Firvulag used new tactics, learned at Finiah, against the battle-mounts of Tanu and torced humanity. The Little People pulled ahead in the body-count scoring, even though the Tanu retained a lead in the more significant banner-capture tally. Velteyn of Finiah, too anxious for vengeance after the loss of his city, was responsible for a Tanu fiasco. Aiken Drum, on the other hand, engineered a number of triumphs by means of tricky maneuvers, which delighted the more progressive Tanu but enraged the reactionaries of the Host, most notably Nodonn Battlemaster. The rivalry between Aiken and Nodonn for the battlemastership became more heated during the second day of fighting. At a war feast, Nodonn tried to discredit Aiken by dramatically producing Bryan Grenfell and his adverse study of humanity’s impact upon the Many-Colored Land. Some of the Tanu abandoned Aiken because of this; but large numbers still were pragmatic enough to stick with him. In the duel between coercers, Imidol of the Host defeated the elderly Leyr. Tough old Celadeyr of Afaliah took the place of the defunct Velteyn as Second Creator under Mercy. Shortly before the Combat’s start, Brede Shipspouse had secretly taken healing Skin to the prison cell in Muriah where Chief Burke, Basil, and Amerie lay dying. The three were fully recovered by the last day of the Combat and Brede led them, mystified, to a room high on the Mount of Heroes inside the Redactor Headquarters, which overlooked the White Silver Plain. Inside this room were lockers full of twenty-second-century equipment that the Tanu had confiscated from time-travelers. More important, Elizabeth was there, apparently in a deep coma. Brede instructed the three to take charge of the equipment and Elizabeth, and wait until the following morning, when they would know what to do. On no account were they to leave the room until then. The Grand Combat approached its finale, in which the champions of the Tanu and Firvulag armies would meet hand to hand. The generalized phase of fighting had given the Tanu a narrow lead over the Little People, but this could be upset during the Heroic Encounters. The Firvulag were especially hopeful because neither Nodonn nor Aiken could participate in the first round of Encounters. Each battlemaster-candidate now had four heroes (leaders) pledged to him, and the candidate whose people won the most duels against the Firvulag heroes would stand forth in the culminating Encounter of Battlemasters against Pallol One-Eye. In the Encounters, Aiken’s partisans won two and lost two. Nodonn’s won one, lost two, and tied one. This meant that Aiken would meet Pallol. If he lost, the Firvulag would win the entire Grand Combat. Aiken maintained that he could beat the Firvulag ogre if the Tanu High Table allowed him to do it in a human way, using the same trick he had used to overcome Delbaeth. Reluctantly, Nodonn and his people had to agree. Aiken went out and downed the Firvulag Battlemaster just as he had promised, and the Tanu were declared winners of the Grand Combat. Heartbroken by their narrow loss, most of the Firvulag decided to leave the battlefield before the award ceremonies. Not even the prospect of seeing Aiken and Nodonn battle it out with Spear and Sword seemed worth waiting for. Only the Firvulag royalty and their attendants remained for the finale. The Tanu victory was ceremoniously proclaimed and Aiken awarded the trophy Sword of Sharn (a photon weapon like the Spear). Instead of offering it in fealty to King Thagdal, thus acknowledging the Tanu’s overlordship, Aiken drove the Sword into the ground. Thagdal signed to Nodonn to take it up as King’s Champion. Meanwhile, Aiken’s allies girded him in the harness of the Spear. The two squared off and began their duel just as the cataclysmic flood from the encroaching Atlantic swept over the White Silver Plain. The mind-cries of the thousands of drowning people roused Elizabeth from her self-imposed coma. She and her three human companions looked out from the mountain refuge upon devastated Muriah and a submerged White Silver Plain. Redactor House contained a number of survivors and Chief Burke prepared for their evacuation. Not all of those combatants and spectators caught on the White Silver Plain perished – although a majority of the Tanu, who were especially vulnerable to immersion, did lose their lives. Some few Tanu were cast ashore by the flood wave or managed to use their metapsychic powers to save themselves. Humans and hybrids in fair numbers swam to safety. Aiken Drum climbed aboard the ceremonial Kral cauldron and later rescued Mercy. The Great Retort, with its load of condemned, floated on the surge and, ironically, brought salvation to Aluteyn Craftsmaster, Raimo Hakkinen, and numbers of others, mostly human. At the end of Book 2, it was evident that an entirely new balance of power would now prevail in the Many-Colored Land. The Firvulag were strong under their new co-monarchs, King Sharn-Mes and Queen Ayfa. The Tanu cities, stripped of their most powerful metapsychic talents, were now vulnerable to attacks by Lowlife humans or the Little People. Most of the Tanu leadership, including Brede Shipspouse, had perished. Those Tanu remaining alive would have to decide whether or not to pledge allegiance to a human usurper who promised that he could save them from annihilation. Now begin Book 3, which, after a brief review of times gone by, picks up the chronicle in the period following the Great Flood.