The Lost King (35 page)

Dixter passed his hand
over his face. He looked aged, haggard. Dion hardly recognized him.

"So it could have
been her I saw, couldn't it, sir?"

"Yes."

"And it makes
sense, now. The baby she talked about was the son of the crown prince
who was born that night."

"Possibly."
Dixter was noncommittal.

"Lady Maigrey
rescues the baby and gives it to the person she trusts—her
brother Platus. He takes the baby off-world, to the most isolated
planet he can find, and we live like criminals, hiding away until
Stavros, who knows where we're hiding, is forced to tell. When you
saw me for the first time, sir, you looked at me as if you knew me.
Who do I look like? Who do I remind you of?"

Dion stared dreamily at
the boy. "All the Starfires had those intense blue eyes of
yours, eyes that seem to be able to see through walls. And you have
your father's red hair and something of your mother's look. She was a
renowned beauty, Princess Semele. You could be her son."

"Heir to a throne
that no longer exists."

"Except in the
minds and hearts of many."

"Was that why they
did it, sir—saved the baby? To bring back the king?"

"If that's even
what
they did. I don't know, Dion. I've told you all I can."

"I saw her. I saw
her as plainly as I see you now, sir. How?"

"The Blood Royal
had the gift of telepathic communication, but it could only be with
those they knew or with someone who had an object that had once
belonged to the one communicating."

Dion's hand reached up
to touch the ring he wore around his neck. That made it conclusive.
But whose ring was it? Why did he have it? And why, if he was who he
thought he might be, had Platus never told him? Indeed, Platus had
made his lineage sound like something to be ashamed of! And here was
this lady, Platus's sister, warning him away.

Dion felt anger
stirring within him. Platus had concealed the truth from him. This
woman was trying to do the same thing. There was only one person he
was beginning to feel he could trust, one person who could
understand.

"Where the devil's
Link?" Dixter glanced impatiently out the window.

"I think I'll go
back to the plane, get my things together so that Link and I can
leave right away," Dion said, standing. He felt little remorse
about lying. They'd lied to him for seventeen years, but he
discovered it wasn't quite that easy. Tusk would wake up, realize he
was gone. "If you'd tell Tusk, sir, that I thank him and I wish—
I wish ..."

Dixter made a
deprecating gesture. "He'll understand."

No he won't. None of
you will. But is that my fault? Dion swallowed, trying to force the
pain down his throat. He thought there must be something he could
say, something that could make it all right.

He looked at the
general's haggard face, the man's gaze that was unfocused but not
quite enough. The general was all too sober.

"Good-bye, sir."

"Be careful what
you wish for, Dion." Dixter glanced up at him, then drained the
last of the brandy. "You may get it."

La cadence est moins
lente, et la chute plus sure.

Gabriele Faure, "Pavan"

Maigrey sat curled up
in the only chair in her small quarters, her head leaning against the
side, her scarred cheek resting on her hand. Melancholy music
accompanied her thoughts—the sad, familiar melody causing her
to remember a time when she had not paid much attention to the words
because she had not understood them. She wished she had listened more
closely, heard what the voices were telling her.

"The cadence is
less slow, and the fall more certain."

The dance was nearing
its end, the pace increasing, growing frantic. . . .

The door to her room
slid open silently and Sagan entered, just as silently. The music
swelled, the voices were sad, but the regret was mingled with a joy
that there had been so much.

The door slid shut.
Sagan stood near her, loomed above her. She did not move or look up
at him, but only listened. What if youth had never been?

"I know I'm your
prisoner, my lord, but you could at least have knocked."

"I heard the
music. I didn't want to disturb you."

The Warlord walked over
to the computer screen that printed out the title of the piece the
person had selected from the ship's music library, but just as he
bent down to look, the name flashed out. "What was it?"

"Faure's 'Pavan'—a
'grave and stately dance.'"

The Warlord moved to
stand behind her and placed a hand upon her shoulder. She flinched at
his touch, though it was gentle and matched his voice. "If so,
my lady, then you must take your final turn upon the floor. For you,
the dance is coming to an end."

Maigrey was not
surprised, nor was she frightened. She was very tired and only wanted
to rest. His hand was warm, a contrast to her chill skin.

"The boy is on his
way," Sagan added.

"You've lost him,
then, my lord."

Maigrey was surprised
he wasn't angrier, but then he'd always been expert at controlling
his emotions. She didn't bother to search his mind or she might have
been prepared for his next statement.

"No, my lady,
though you did your best to warn him. He's on his way to me."

Maigrey raised her
head, stared at him. Her movement caused her pale hair to brush
across the back of his fingers and he withdrew his hand away from the
touch.

"I don't believe
you."

"Yes, you do, my
lady. We can keep our thoughts hidden from each other, but we can't
lie. This shouldn't come as a shock, Maigrey." Sagan rubbed one
hand over the other, as if the flesh had been burned. "You
should have anticipated it. I did. He is, after all, of the Blood
Royal."

Slowly, not taking her
eyes from him, Maigrey rose out of her chair and stood, facing him.
"A trap! It was all a trap."

"Traps are clumsy.
I prefer to think of it as a finesse that, if it succeeds, gives me
an extra trick."

"And if it had
failed?"

"I still make my
bid. You see, Maigrey, if the boy had taken your warning and fled, I
had decided that I did not want him anyway."

"The taint in our
blood. That's what's in him!" Maigrey began to shiver. Clasping
her arms, she huddled within herself, turning away from him. "You've
won, seemingly, my lord.
If
he's who you think he is. Why
don't you leave? There's no need to torment me further, I suppose."

Sagan came near her.
She could feel the warmth of his body, the heat of his mind. His hand
touched her, his thoughts enveloped her, both drew her near.

"Perhaps the dance
doesn't need to end. We could be partners again, like we used to be."
His breath stirred against her hair; his hands closed, painfully
tight, over her flesh. The name of the music she heard in his voice
was power, its melody was ambition, its theme—conquest. And the
hell of it was that she was enjoying it.

"I am going to the
assembly hall to meet him. In one hour,

I shall send for you."
Sagan's grip tightened imperceptibly. Maigrey couldn't breathe. He
might have had his hands around her throat instead of on her arms.
"You will make the identification."

No need to tell him she
couldn't. He knew better.

Maigrey hung her head
and did not answer. The hands left and took their warmth with them.
She thought she heard Sagan over near the computer but she couldn't
imagine why. Then the door opened and shut and he was gone. After a
moment, music began to play again, something
he'd
programmed.
She recognized it—the opening of the second act of Puccini's
Tosca
. Baron Scarpia's voice, rich, smooth, pleased with
himself and the world.

"
Tosca e un
buonfalco. Certo a quest'ora i miei segugi le due prede azzannano
!

The assembly hall was
the largest chamber on
Phoenix
. Located in the very center of
the ship, it was used only when the President arrived to address his
troops. At other times, it was sealed off. The corridors leading to
it were silent and empty. Maigrey's footsteps and those of her guards
echoed through it with a hollow sound.

Lighting had been
switched to the lowest level possible to conserve energy. Nuke lamps
positioned in the ceiling at intervals of about ten meters
illuminated circles of about three meters. The remainder of the
corridor was in semidarkness, the lights' reflections shining in the
metallic walls like small suns.

Maigrey wasn't
surprised to see this portion of the ship deserted. Sagan had never
been one for public exhortations to the troops to give their all for
the fatherland. Under the Warlord's command, a soldier didn't fight
and die for some faceless politician and dust-covered rhetoric. A
soldier fought and died for his own honor and that of his
commander's.

"As he was
valiant, I honor him ..." the quote from Shapespeare's
Julius
Caesar
began in her thoughts.

Courage was something
you couldn't give a man in a speech but only by example. Sagan was
their example. Once, he'd been hers.

Tosca is a good guide
to our victims. Surely by now my bloodhounds have seized their double
prey.

"... but as he was
ambitious, I slew him."

Maigrey hadn't meant to
finish the quotation and wished she'd never thought of it. She forced
her mind to walk the dark and shadowy corridors of the ship, not
those of memory. This meeting would be accompanied by enough ghosts
without her bringing along extras.

The guards came to a
halt in front of what appeared to be a blank wall. One pressed his
palm against a security device and a huge steel panel rumbled open.
The gap it created would have admitted an army. Maigrey felt small
and abashed walking through it alone and smaller still when she set
foot in the vast, windowless, circular chamber.

Hundreds of tiny
spotlights positioned high, high above her in the ceiling imitated
stars, were reflected off metal walls that had been covered with a
dull gold alloy. The domed ceiling was ribbed with bands that rose up
from the floor to meet at a circle in the center. The huge room
reminded Maigrey of nothing so much as an overturned battle helmet.

At the circle's very
top, illuminated by a single bright spotlight, was the seal of the
Republic. Directly beneath the seal, on the floor below, stood a
dais, and on that dais was a throne, fashioned with the arms and
crests of the President. Moving nearer, studying it curiously,
Maigrey saw that the dais was operated by hydraulic lifts and could
be raised above the heads of the crowd. She guessed that it could
also be slowly rotated, so that the President could be seen by all.
Maigrey understood more fully than ever why this place was never
used. The wonder of it was why Sagan hadn't been able to foresee,
years ago, that the revolution would come to nothing but this—empty
hallways filled with echoes, a politician's gimmick.

The doors boomed shut
and Maigrey, starting nervously, turned to see that she was alone.
The centurions had not followed her inside. Sagan, although he had
said he would meet her here, was not in the hall, or at least not
visible. She felt his presence, but then she always felt his presence
now. He could be across the galaxy and she would still feel his
presence.

Heat had not been
wasted on this vast room. Maigrey shivered in the cold, and to keep
her blood stirring and her thoughts from wandering off down forbidden
paths, she walked across the floor toward the throne. The walk was a
long one; the room's size was immense. She could imagine the boy
making this same walk, under the scrutiny of herself and Derek Sagan.
She pitied the young man, but it was a pity that was cool and
dispassionate. He had chosen his own end.

Maigrey climbed the
dais and, turning, looked out upon the empty chamber. She was forced
to admit to herself that she admired the boy. Like Sagan had said, if
he'd run, she would have understood, but she would have had no use
for him. The taint in the blood. It burned like a fever—in
some, not in all. Platus had never been afflicted. He'd tried to
purge the boy of it, seemingly. Slowly, hardly realizing what she was
doing, her mind on the young man whom she'd seen only briefly and
indistinctly through a ring of flame, Maigrey sat down upon the
throne.

"Power becomes
you, my lady. But, then, it always did."

The voice came from
without and from within and drove the hall's chill deep into her
bones. Sagan emerged from the shadows of the room's far distant
perimeter. He was clad in burnished golden armor; the golden helmet
hid his face except for the mouth. A red feathered crest burst like
flame from the top of the helmet, his red cape edged in gold and
decorated with the phoenix swept the floor behind him. Around his
waist, he wore the bloodsword.

Maigrey was clad in the
indigo blue robes of the Guardians. The light of the starjewel
gleamed like a pale moon on her breast. Around her waist, she wore
the bloodsword.

Sagan stood at the foot
of the dais, looking up at her. Through the slits in the helm, she
could see the starjewel's light glitter in the eyes as if on a blade
of steel.

"This was the
reason why I let you live that night, Maigrey. Killing you would have
been like cutting off my sword arm. I once cursed the mind-link that
bound me to you, but I was young then. I didn't understand. We were a
power, lady, a force that nothing could stop. Don't you remember,
Maigrey? When we were together, we were invincible. The Creator
intended it to be so. As proof, He has brought us together again.
Will you continue to thwart His will?"

Slowly the life drained
from her body. Maigrey couldn't move, couldn't take her eyes from
him. His words conjured up the past, brought back hopes and dreams,
brought back exultation and victory and pride. Once again it could be
like that. She could have it all and more, join together—Warlord,
Warlady. Overthrow this mockery of a government and rule as they'd
been born to rule. It would be easy. Nothing had ever defeated them.