King Kobold Revived Read online

  King Kobold Revived

  By

  Christopher Stasheff

  Contents

  To My Readers

  Prologue

  Part I

  Part II

  TO MY READERS

  This isn’t a new book.

  But it isn’t an old book, either.

  Let me tell you how it happened…

  Back in 1970, when King Kobold was first published, I waited with bated breath to see what the critics thought of it—and was rather disheartened to find they weren’t exactly overwhelmingly enthusiastic. That’s when I decided I shouldn’t pay too much attention to the critics.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t ignore Lester del Rey. I had always admired his perspicacity and penetrating insight (i.e., he always agreed with my opinion about new books. Please understand that, at the time, I had never met him.). When del Rey said, “It isn’t a bad book, if you don’t expect too much of the eve-ning spent with it,” I knew I was in trouble. Worse, letters began arriving—and they agreed with del Rey! And though del Rey had been gentle and charitable, the fans felt no such need for restraint.

  So, when the good people at Ace indicated an interest in reissuing King Ko-bold, I said, “Not until I rewrite it!”

  Please remember, I’d had twelve years to mull over the flaws of the original, and figure out how to fix them. There were some changes that I knew I definitely wanted to make, and quite a few others that I was thinking about.

  So the book you hold in your hand is not the product of a publisher who tried to jazz things up to hype sales; it’s the result of a mulish writer who refused to go through having fans call him nasty names again. If you bought the original King Kobold fourteen years ago and misplaced your copy-sorry, this ain’t quite the same book you read back then. And, if you never did read King Kobold (an of-fense I will overlook only if you were too young to read), this ain’t the plot you’ve been hearing about. Better, I hope, but not the same. If your favorite scenes are missing—well, sorry. Or, worse yet, your favorite character—well, I’m even sorrier; but I just don’t think he really worked (not “she”—she was a total nonentity, and I don’t see how anybody could miss her—except maybe “him”). All in all, I’m pretty satisfied with this revised version; it’s still essentially the same story, but I think it’s much more solid, and a much better read (all right, so I haven’t cut out all the lousy jokes). Besides, if you really liked it better the other way—well, there’s always the original edition. You’ll have to search a little to find a copy, but if you’d rather read it, you can.

  Thank you all, for pestering your bookstores for King Kobold, and bringing it out of hiding again. Here it is, the same story—what happened to Rod and Gwen when they’d only been married a few years, and only had one baby warlock to contend with. I hope you enjoy it. I did.

  —Christopher Stasheff

  Montclair State College

  October 4,1983

  Prologue

  “Sorrowful it was, and great cause for Mourning, that so young a King should die, and that in his Bed; yet Death doth come to all, yea, the High and the lowly alike, and ‘tis not by our choosing, but by God’s. Thus is was that King Richard was taken from us in the fourteenth year of his Reign, though he had not yet seen forty-five summers; and great lamentation passed through the land. Yet must Life endure, and the motion of it never doth cease, so that we laid him to rest with his ancestors, and turned our faces toward our new Sovereign, his daughter Catharine, first Queen of that name to Reign, though it had been scarcely twenty years since her birth.

  “Then the Lords of this land of Gramarye sat them down in Council, and rose up to advise the young Queen of her actions, and at their head stood the Duke Loguire, time-honored and revered, foremost of the Lords of this Land, and Un-cle to the Queen. Yet she would not hearken to him, nor to any of her Lords, but set her face toward the doing of things as she saw them, and would not heed Council. And what she wished done, she set in the hands of the Dwarf Brom O’Berin, who had come to the Court as her father’s Jester, but King Richard had raised him to Chancellor; and Queen Catharine ennobled him. This did affront all the Peers of the Land, that she should set a Dwarf in their midst, and he base-born, for she would trust none among them.

  “Then did Loguire send his younger son Tuan, who long had courted Catha-rine ere her Father died, to beg of her that she plight him her Troth, and come with him to the Altar to become his Wife. And she called this foul treason, that he should seek the Crown under guise of her Hand, and banished him from the land, and set him adrift in a coracle, that the East wind might take him to the Wild Lands, to dwell among Monsters and Beastmen, though all of his crime was the love of her. Then was his father full wroth, and all the Lords with him; but Loguire held his hand, and so, perforce, must they all; but Tuan his son swam back to the shore, and stole within the Land again, by night, and would not be exiled.

  “Then did Catharine the Queen meet with her great Lords all, in her great Hall in Runnymede, and did say unto them, ‘Lo, it seemeth thou dost take boys from the plow, who know neither Letters nor Holiness, and doth set them above thy people as priests, that they may more certainly do thy bidding; and know that such practice doth offend the Lord God, and affronteth thy Queen; where-fore, henceforth, I shall appoint thee full measure of Priests, and send them unto thee; and I will not brook nay-saying.’ Then were the Lords wroth indeed, but Loguire held up his hand, and they checked. And it came to pass as the Queen had said, that the souls of her people were governed by monks that she sent out from Runnymede, though they did oftimes confirm the priests the Lords had set over their Parishes; yet some among them had grown slack and, aye, even sinful; and these the Queen’s monks removed, and set others of their number up in their steads.

  “Then did the Queen summon all her Lords unto her again, and did say unto them, ‘Lo, I have seen the Justice that is done on thine estates, both by thyselves and by the Judges thou dost appoint; and I have seen that the manner of Justice thou dost deliver is not all of one piece; for Hapsburg in the East will hew off a man’s hand for the theft of a loaf of bread, while Loguire in the South will only outlaw a man for a Murder; and I have seen that my people grow restive there-fore, and are like to forsake the ways of Law in their confusion. Therefore wilt thou no longer deliver thyselves of Justice, nor set others to judge thy folk for thee; but all shall be judged by men that I shall send among thee, from my Court in Runnymede.’ Then all the Lords waxed wroth indeed, and would have haled her down from her Throne; but the Duke Loguire withheld them, and turned his face away from the Queen, and withdrew to his Estates, and so did they all; but some among them began to plot Treason, and Loguire’s eldest son Anselm made one of them.

  “Then, of a night, thunder did roll and fill all the World, though the skies were clear, and the Moon bright and full, and folk looked up and wondered, and did see a star fall from the Heavens, and they turned away marveling, and pray-ing that it might prove an Omen, heralding the healing of their Land of Gramarye, as indeed it did; for the Star fell to land, and from it stepped the High Warlock, Rod Gallowglass, tall among the sons of men, high of brow, noble of mien, with a heart of golden courage and thews of steel, merciful to all, but stern in justice, with a mind like sunlight caught in crystal, that clearly understood all the actions of all men, and his face was comely above all others.

  “He came unto the Queen, but she knew him not, and thought him only one among her soldiers; yet there was poison in the air about her, and he knew it, and did banish it; and thereupon she knew him. And she sent him to the South, to guard her Uncle, for she knew that Treason brewed, and not only toward her-self. And the Warlock did as she bade him, and took with him, f
or a servant, the giant Tom. And they came unto Loguire secretly, under the guise of Minstrels, yet they had not been heard to sing. And there were ghosts within Loguire’s cas-tle, and the High Warlock did befriend them.

  “Then did Loguire summon all the Lords of the Realm, and they came to him at his castle in the South, that he might counsel them to withhold their power yet awhile; but being met, they brewed their Treason ‘gainst him.

  “And there were witches in the land, and warlocks too; and word did go from mouth to mouth, the Rumor that speaks more loudly than the heralds, that the Queen had welcomed to her keep all witchfolk who did wish her protection, and there they held wild Revels through the night, for many were the Good Folk who had sought to burn them; and folk began to murmur that the Queen herself had something of witchcraft in her.

  “And the High Warlock did befriend the witches, even Gwendylon, most powerful among them, and she was young, and comely, and he spoke to her of Love.

  “And Lord Tuan came by night unto the town of Runnymede, that he might be near unto the Queen, though she despised him, and he came unto the beggars, and sought Sanctuary amongst them; and he taught them Governance, and they made him King among them. Yet the one among them whom Lord Tuan most trusted, he who held the purse and was called ‘the Mocker,’ bethought himself of Lord Tuan’s mock crown.

  “Then, when all the Lords were met at Loguire’s demesne in the South, and Anselm with them, they did stand against Loguire’s face and refute his leader-ship, raising up young Anselm to the Dukedom in his father’s stead; and one Durer, erstwhile Loguire’s councillor, drew blade against him. Then did the High Warlock by High Magic snuff out all the lamps and torches, so that Loguire’s hall lay all in darkness, for his Hall lay underground, and had no windows. And the High Warlock conjured up the ghosts that dwelt within that keep, and they did pass amongst the folk within that hall, and all were sore afeared, aye, even those great Lords that there were met; and the Warlock stole the Duke Loguire away, and brought him secretly unto the Queen at Runnymede.

  “Then did the Lords summon up their armies, and all did march against the Queen. But the High Warlock spake unto the Elves that dwelt within that land, and they did swear to fight beside him, and the Witches also. And the High War-lock called up young Tuan Loguire, and he marched forth with all his beggars; and thus they came to Breden Plain: a Queen, a Warlock, and a dwarf, with an army made of witches, elves, and beggars.

  “Then, under the Sun, the Lords charged out in bold array, but their horses sank into the Earth, for elves had mined it; and they hurled their spears and ar-rows ‘gainst the Queen, but witches turned their shafts, and they fell back amongst the Armies of the Lords, and there did grievous harm. Then did Lord Tuan lead his beggars forth, and his father beside him, to finish what the witches had begun, and all the Field fell into melee. And the giant Tom rose up amidst that churning mass, and hewed a path unto the Lords and all their Councillors, and the beggars followed, and did beat down all those men-at-arms and Council-lors, and made prisoners of the Lords; but the giant Tom did, in that carnage, perish, and the Warlock mourned him, and the beggars also.

  “Then would the Queen have slain the Lords, or chained them into Servitude, but the Warlock spoke against it, and the Queen gazed upon his lowering brow, and knew fear. But Tuan Loguire stood beside her, and faced against the War-lock, and cried that all should be as the Queen had said; but the Warlock felled him with a most foul blow, and struck the Queen in remonstrance, and rode away upon his charmed steed, that no mortal mount could near; yet Lord Tuan in his agony shot forth a bolt that struck the Warlock as he fled.

  “Then did Queen Catharine cry Lord Tuan as the Staff of her strength and the Guard of her honor, and spoke to him of love, and gave him the Lords to do with as he wished. Then did Lord Tuan free them, but with their heirs as hostages, and he took their armies for the Crown. And he did take Queen Catharine unto the altar, and became our King thereby, and reigned with Catharine the Queen.

  “But the Warlock sought out the witch Gwendylon, and she did draw Lord Tuan’s bolt from out him, and enchanted the wound so that it did no harm; and the Warlock spoke to her of love, and brought her to the altar.

  “And the Lords went back to their demesnes, and there ruled Justly, for the King’s Eye was upon them, and all was peaceful in the land of Gramarye, and contentment returned unto its folk.

  “So matters stood for two years and more, and men began to trust their Lords once more, and to look kindly upon their fellows again.

  “Then the night wind blew wailing and keening from the southern shore, and the sounds of War…”

  —Chillde’s Chronicles of the Reign of Tuan and Catharine

  “According to the records, the planet was colonized by a crackpot group who dressed up in armor and held tournaments for fun; they called themselves the ‘Romantic Émigrés.’ This kind of group acted as a selective mechanism, attract-ing people with latent psi powers. Put them all together on one planet and let them inbreed for a few centuries, and you get espers—which is what they’ve got here. Only a small percentage of the population, of course, but I have grounds for believing the rest are latents. They think they’re normal, though, and call the es-pers ‘witches’ if they’re female, and ’warlocks’ if they’re male.

  “What’s worse, there’s a native fungus that reacts to projective telepaths; the locals call it ‘witch moss,’ because if the right kind of ‘witch’ thinks hard at it, it turns into whatever she’s thinking about. So the ones who don’t know they’re witches sit around telling fairy tales to their children, and, first thing you know, the landscape is filled with elves and ghosts and werewolves—I’ll show you my bites sometime.

  “In this agent’s humble opinion, the place is a communications gold mine and the answer to the prayers of our noble Decentralized Democratic Tribunal. A democracy can’t survive if its territory gets too big for the speed of its communi-cations system, and the last projection I heard was that the DDT would hit criti-cal size in about a hundred fifty years. If I can turn this planet into a democracy, it’ll have just what the DDT needs—instantaneous communication over any dis-tance. All the guesswork I’ve read about telepathy says it’ll be instantaneous, re-gardless of distance, and what I’ve seen on this planet bears that out.

  “But if the planet is vital to the success of democracy, it is equally vital for to-talitarians and anarchists to keep it away from the democrats—and they’re trying to do just that. The totalitarians are represented by a proletarian organization called the House of Clovis, which is trying to organize all the beggars and petty criminals, and doing a pretty good job of it, too. The anarchists are working on the noblemen; each of the twelve Great Lords has a councillor who is, I’m pretty sure, one of the anarchists.

  “Where have they come from? Well, they might just have sneaked in from off-planet—but I’ve found at least one gizmo that can’t be anything but a time machine, and I’ve got good reason to believe there’re more.

  “What upsets me about the place is the uncertainty factor. Given the local ge-netic makeup, and the telepathically sensitive fungus, virtually anything could happen—which means that, if I wait long enough, it probably will…”

  —Excerpt from Report on Beta Cassiopeiae Gamma (local name “Gramarye”), by Rodney d’Armand, Agent for Society for Conversion of Extra-terrestrial Nascent Totalitarianisms

  Part I

  The heavy clinging fog lay dense, nearly opaque, over the heaving sea. The rolling, endless crash of breakers against the headlands at the harbor’s mouth came muted and distant.

  High above, circling unseen, a bird called plaintive sentry cries.

  The dragon shouldered out of the swirling mist, its beaked, arrogant head held high.

  Four more like it loomed out of the fog at its back.

  Round, bright-painted shields hung on their sides.

  Oars speared out from the shields, lifting in unison and falling feathered to the waves.r />
  The dragon’s single wing was tightly furled around the crossbar lashed to the tall, single mast that thrust upward out of its back.

  Squat, hulking, helmeted shapes prowled silently about the mast.

  The dragon had an eagle’s beak, and a tall, ribbed fin for a crest. Two long, straight horns probed out from its forehead.

  The surf moaned on the shore as the dragon led its mates past the headland.

  The child screamed, howling for his mother, thrashing himself into a tangle with the thick fur blanket.

  Then the oil lamp was there, just a rag in a dish, but warm and safe, throwing its yellow glow upward on the mother’s weary, gentle face.

  She gathered the quivering, sobbing little body into her arms, murmuring, “There now, love, there. Mama’s here. She won’t let him hurt you.”

  She held the child tightly, rubbing his back until the sobbing ceased. “There now, Artur, there. What was it, darling?”

  The child sniffled and lifted his head from her shoulder. “Bogeyman, Mama. Chasing me, and—he had a great big knife!”

  Ethel’s mouth firmed. She hugged the child and glared at the lamp-flame. “The bogeymen are far across the sea, darling. They can’t come here.”

  “But Carl says…”

  “I know, I know. Carl’s mama tells him the bogeyman will get him if he’s bad. But that’s just a silly story, darling, to frighten silly children. You’re not silly, are you?”

  Artur was silent a while; then he murmured into the folds of his mother’s gown, “Uh… no, Mama…”

  “Of course you’re not.” She patted his back, laid him down in the bed, and tucked the fur robe under his chin. “That’s my brave boy. We both know the bogeyman can’t hurt us, don’t we?”

  “Yes, Mama,” the child said uncertainly.

  “Sleep sweetly, darling,” the mother said, and closed the door softly behind her.