Golden Torc - 2 Read Free

knife, and a fact that Amerie had already suspected became confirmed: Iron was poisonous to the Tanu, perhaps acting in some way to destroy the linkage between the exotic brain and the golden torc. (Felice looked upon Madame's own golden torc with some speculation at this point, but the intrepid old woman simply pricked herself with the blade to show that humans were made of tougher stuff).
    At this point, a personage named Fitharn Pegleg arrived within the hollow tree. Resembling a short, sturdy human, he proved to be a Firvulag capable of assuming a monstrous shape, one of the Little People who had originally befriended Madame Guderian in the Pliocene. As she explained her plan to liberate enslaved humanity, Madame asked Fitharn to recite an ancient lay traditional among his people. It told of the original arrival of Tanu and Firvulag on Earth in a gigantic living spaceship that had as its spouse Brede, a woman from the exotic galaxy. In making the incredible journey across millions of light-years, the Ship was fatally strained. Tanu, Firvulag, and Brede escaped from the hulk in small flyers and watched the remains of the huge organism crash upon Pliocene Europe, forming a crater "too wide to see across." To consecrate the Ship's Grave, a ritual battle was fought by two heroes, Sharn of the Firvulag and Lugonn of the Tanu, the former armed with a photonic weapon called the Sword, the latter using a similar laser-type projector called the Spear. Sharn was defeated. The victor, Lugonn the Shining One, had the honor of receiving a blast from his own Spear between his eyes. Laid out in his golden glass armor, Spear at his side, Lugonn was left at the Ship's Grave to "captain it upon its final flight."
    After a thousand years had passed, the remote location of the Ship's Grave had faded from the memory of Tanu and Firvulag alike. But the legend had sparked hope in Madame Guderian. The Sword of Sharn was now in Tanu hands, serving as a trophy awarded to the winner of the annual Grand Combat religious war. But the Spear of Lugonn must still be there beside the crater lake, together with the gravo-magnetically powerful flying machines that had carried the exotics from their dying Ship. If the Lowlives could secure the photon weapon or a flying machine,or both, they would gain an unprecedented advantage over the metapsychic barbarians who constituted the Tanu chivalry.
    Lowlives and friendly Firvulag had searched in vain for the Ship's Grave. But now Claude, knowledgeable in future geology, told them where it must be. Only one astrobleme in Europe fit the description, a crater called the Ries that lay some 300 kilometers to the east, on the northern shore of the Danube River.
    Jubilation greeted this intelligence, and it was decided to mount an expedition at once. With luck, the searchers might return before the end of the month. Then Firvulag would join Lowlife humanity in an attack against Finiah, provided that the fighting took place before the start of the Grand Combat Truce beginning at dawn on October first. The expedition would consist of Fitharn, Madame Guderian, Chief Burke, a dynamicfield engineer named Martha, a former gravomag repair technician named Stefanko, and three members of Group Green. Claude would guide them to the spot. Richard (over his protests) would pilot a flyer if one could be made operational. Felice insisted she would be useful fending off wild beasts with her special talent, as well as doing chores such as hunting for food. (She had to go; around the neck of Lugonn's skeleton was a golden torc.)
    Fitharn proposed that the expedition receive official sanction from the Firvulag monarch, Yeochee IV. Before leaving the tree, Madame gave secret orders to a Lowlife metalsmith, Khalid Khan, to take a group of men to a site designated by Claude, where iron ore might easily be found. They were to smelt as much of the "blood-metal" as possible and bring it back to the principal Lowlife settlement of Hidden