The Rebel of Rhada (12 page)

“Damn the Imperial family,” the old warman grumbled. “They have cost the Rhad an ocean of blood.”

Cavour smiled ruefully. “It is the way of Imperial families,” he said. “From the beginning of time it has always been so.”

Kier regarded his companions in silence. How near to truth they came, only to fall short of the vision. Perhaps the quality that set apart the leaders of men was this margin. Cavour and the general saw only the cost. They could not see the glowing dream of a united, peaceful civilization stretching from one rim of the galaxy to the other. The captains and the kings, the warmen and Imperial families, the starfleets and the men who voyaged in them were only the instruments that would one day in the distant future buy that great dream for all men. Glamiss and Aaron the Devil had that vision. Perhaps Ariane, too, had it. It was the greatest and the final test of rulers. Without it, the torrent of history would sweep them under, and they would be forgotten.

“It is decided, then,” he said. “You will put me aground on Sarissa. Then you will take Ariane to Rhada.”

The voice from the portal was imperious and angry.

“What gives you the right to make decisions without me, Rebel?”

Ariane’s eyes were bright with anger, and Kier thought irrelevantly that she had never looked so beautiful. The men rose to greet her.

She swept into the room, still dressed in war gear, the silvery mail flashing in the torchlight. Behind her, bearing her weapons, came Han, the young Vyk warman, and Erit and Gret.

Kier looked at his general and the warlock and murmured, with a half-smile, “Well, gentlemen. We’ve created a Queen-Empress. Now it seems I must deal with her. You can leave us.”

The older men saluted and bowed to Ariane. “With your permission, noble lady,” said Cavour gallantly.

Ariane watched them go with sparking eyes. “With my permission or without it,” she said angrily. She turned on the warman Han. “Well, go with them,” she snapped.

The boy saluted in confusion and fled, wondering how someone so beautiful could be so unpredictable. The two Vulks withdrew together into the shadows.

Ariane said to Kier, “Now what is this about sending me off to Rhada, Rebel?”

Kier held a chair for her, but she ignored it, pacing angrily across the god-metal decking, the thigh-length metal of her mail shirt rustling musically.

“For your safety, Ariane,” Kier said. “It’s best.”

“Are you to decide that?”

His smile grew broader. “I am, Queen.”

“By what right?”

“As your warleader.”

The girl threw herself into the chair suddenly, her face somber. “What’s happening, Kier?” she said in a muffled voice. “Are the star kings gathering? Is it all going to be for nothing?”

Kier leaned against the ancient carved table near her and looked at her proud, unhappy face. She raised her eyes to meet his, and he could see a suspicious brightness in them.

“In a few short years have we lost everything our fathers fought for, Kier. Will the Dark Time come again?”

Kier reached forward and cupped her chin gently. “We’re not beaten yet, Ariane.”

She closed her eyes, and tears glistened on her dark lashes. “I’m thinking of my brother. Would they really have killed him? Could Mariana be so cruel? He is only a little boy--”

Kier shook his head slowly. “He was Galacton, Ariane. And if he is dead or imprisoned, then you are Queen-Empress. Remember it. All we hope for depends on you.”

She raised her head. “I won’t forget it.” And then she added in a level voice, “And neither shall Mariana and her Vegan lover.” She brushed aside Kier’s hand and stood, her eyes shining angrily. “No more mourning,” she said. Then, determinedly, she changed the subject. “Kier, does the name Kelber mean anything to you?”

“Landro mentioned that some of the new ballistae in Nyor were the work of someone by that name. Only that.”

“He is a warlock of Sarissa. Would Cavour know of him?”

“Perhaps. Is it important?” “Mariana dealt with him.”

Kier called to a warman to bring Cavour to them. Then he turned to Ariane. “Were there no warlocks in Nyor that Mariana had to buy spells from a Sarissan?”

“I wish I knew,” Ariane said. “It was Erit who sensed the name from Mariana. It was nothing she would ever have spoken about. I cannot help but think that this Kelber was involved in Mariana’s plotting.”

Kier called the Vulks to him. They had been sitting apart, silent in the shadows, foreheads and fingertips touching.

In the light of the torches that lit the metal-walled room, the two Vulks were almost indistinguishable. Though one lived among the Rhad and the other on the Imperial planet, even their clothing was the same. Kier, like any human, tended to think of them in human terms--as male and female. But the distinction could not be so simply made. Vulks were all parts of a single organism, an intricate complex of minds that had been shattered by dispersion across stellar distances in the dim past. The Vulk race no longer functioned as it once had done, but when two or more Vulks came into close contact, some fragment of that once-immense racial entity was re-created.
The Vulk Protocols,
discredited in much of the galaxy now, had once inflamed human fear and hatred by distorting and exaggerating this power to combine minds. To Kier, the Vulk mind-touch was simply a potentially useful instrument of empire.

“Tell me of Kelber the Sarissan,” he said to the Vulks.

“It was long ago,” Erit replied. “I sensed Mariana’s thought that one called Kelber would provide a warleader.”

Kier said thoughtfully, “No more than that? Warleaders are cheap enough.”

“Not like this one, King,” Gret said.

Kier noted that Gret now knew what Erit knew. He could guess how this sharing of minds must have frightened the half savages who compiled the
Protocols.
It had been the undoing of the gentle Vulks--this ability to do what men could not do.

Gret smiled sadly, knowing what Kier’s thought was. “Men rule, King, not Vulks. It is not our way. But no matter. Mariana sought a warleader from the warlock Kelber. That is all we know.”

“What warleader?” Kier asked.

The Vulk shrugged. “For some reason we do not understand, there was no name. And all men have names, King. Do they not?”

“All that I know.”

“Yet this one did not. He was mighty, stronger than most men. Perhaps a man of the Golden Age.”

Kier looked questioningly at Ariane and saw that Cavour had returned. “You heard, Cavour?”

“I heard.”

“Is it possible?”

Cavour shrugged and pulled at his beard. “I would not say something is impossible.”

“But a man of the Golden Age? An immortal?”

Cavour spread his hands. “I think not, King. I have studied the
Warls
all my life. There is no evidence the ancients conquered death. But there are hints of other things, other sorts of men, different kinds of life--” He frowned thoughtfully. “The men of the Golden Age were wise beyond our knowing, King.”

Ariane asked, “Have you ever heard of this Kelber?”

“Long ago there was a warlock of that name. It was said he knew the
Warls
better than most. But he was old. He should have been dead for many years.”

“A Sarissan?” Kier asked.

“No. An Imperial, I think. From one of the Inner Worlds. Bellerive, I believe. But, of course, warlocks travel. In those days, usually with a mob chasing them. He could have gone to Sarissa.”

“A warleader,” Kier mused. “Tallan?”

Cavour considered. “A legendary man, King. He rose like a comet on Sarissa. But I doubt he is immortal or any such thing. We know that travelers say he was born on the southern continent of Sarissa, became a bandit chief there, came to Sardis with an army, and overthrew the Interregnal lords. Sarissa is such a backward place that neither Glamiss nor any of his generals ever thought of garrisoning the planet. It was only a year ago that Tallan sent his pledge to Torquas.” The warlock smiled apologetically at Kier. “There is nothing in any of this to mark him as anything more than another turbulent star king.”

“Still,” Ariane said with a shiver of superstitious dread,
“could
he be an immortal?”

Kier said flatly, “There are no immortals, Ariane. There never have been.”

“It is as he says, Queen,” Cavour agreed. “I suggested that the men of the Golden Age might have been able to do things that would seem miraculous to us. But I doubt that even they could conquer death.”

“And Kelber?”

“A student of the
Warls,
Queen,” Cavour said. “Like myself. Like thousands of us all over the galaxy who think the Navigators go too slowly in uncovering the old knowledge.” He pursed his lips and regarded the girl almost with defiance. “If that is heresy, I ask that you keep in mind that I am a Rhadan.” He paused and then went on with the ghost of a smile. “And we Rhadans are a rebellious lot, so I’m told.”

In the control room of the great starship, the watch was changing. Kalin had completed the ritual of the position report when the Warning sounded.

For a moment the young Navigator and the novice Brother John, who sat beside him, were startled. The dogma explained the Warning, and all Navigators knew of it, but neither of the two young men had ever been aboard a starship when a Warning was actually sounded.

From the sealed panel above their heads, the amber-colored light began to flash, and they could hear the mysterious electronic tones sounding within the walls as the ancient machinery began a series of micro-second-swift, all but incomprehensible calculations of speed, declination, and ascension: pinpointing the other vessel in the cosmic immensity ahead.

A display in three dimensions appeared above the acceleration couches. It was at first a swirling blackness that swiftly cleared into a holographic image of the billions of cubic miles of space ahead of the Rhadan vessel. Brother John’s eyes widened, and he hurriedly made the sign of the Star. The appearance of the display was, to him, a miraculous confirmation of the ancient dogma. In another age an appearance of the Virgin before two members of the priesthood would have been comparable--a thing the Church taught was possible, but miraculous in its reality, nevertheless.

For Kalin, however, the Warning and the display were unsettling only because he had never actually seen such manifestations. That the starships were capable of producing them he knew.

The display crystallized. There was no scale of values that either of the two priests could apply. They had no suspicion of the vastness of the space represented. But the moving red spark among the tiny stars was something they understood well enough. It was a starship similar to their own, moving at almost their speed and on exactly the same course--for Sarissa. The detectors had discovered the other vessel at extreme range, hours ahead of them. And even as they watched, the spark reached the edge of the display and vanished.

Brother John made the sign again and whispered a prayer. “We are most favored among men, First Pilot,” he said fervently. “That we should witness a Warning.”

Kalin said nothing for a moment, watching with fascinated interest as the insubstantial sphere of star-shot darkness brightened for a moment and then faded as the star-ship ahead passed out of range.

“Space is huge, Brother John,” he said. “Today a chance meeting of starships is almost impossible. In the Golden Age it must have happened often.”

“Our brothers aboard that other ship, First Pilot. Did
they
see
us?”

“If their detectors worked as well as ours, yes.”

“Blessed be the Name,” Brother John murmured unctuously.

Kalin sat for a moment, thoughtfully staring at the empty space where the Warning had appeared. Same course, same speed. The other starship’s appearance could mean only one thing. He stood up abruptly and handed the watch to Brother John. Then he hurried from the control room to find his cousin Kier, who must be told.

Who is so deafe or so blinde as is hee
That willfully will neither heare nor see?

Pre-Golden Age proverb

Unhallowed knowledge brought the Dark Time, and fire from the sky, and death to men in ten times a thousand dreadful ways. So I say this to you: Seek not to know, for to know is to sin. Delve not into the Holy Mysteries. Ask not
how,
nor
how much,
nor
how far,
nor
how many.
He who disturbs the mysterious ways of the universe is heretic, and an enemy of God and Man, and will burn.

Talvas Hu Chien, Grand Inquisitor of Navigators
Interregnal period

The arbitrary intervals of time that men called “days” in space passed slowly as the Rhadan starship moved deep into that area of the galaxy known to the starfarers of the Second Empire as the Rim.

In this region the stars were separated by immense gulfs, and great sectors of the sky were dark but for the distant luminosities that some theorists claimed were other, unimaginably isolated galaxies.

In his quarters the warlock Cavour sat at his worktable, notebooks before him, a spirit lamp burning. A set of polished crystals lying on a piece of dark cloth glistened in the torchlight.

Ariane, wandering restlessly through the ship, found him so.

The warlock looked up and would have risen from his seat, but she refused the formality.

“Tell me what it is that you are doing,” she said. “Everyone on board has something he must do, but I have nothing.”

Cavour smiled and indicated a seat at his worktable. “In the Golden Age it is said that there were entertainments to help pass the time in space, Queen. But we are more fortunate. We have to stretch our minds for amusement.”

The girl frowned and sat. “Kier and his cousin have been locked up for days--ever since Kalin received the Warning.”

“Kier is a fighting man, Queen. And his duty is to guard you.”

“I know all that,” Ariane said irritably. “But what does it matter if an Imperial starship is ahead of us to Sarissa? For that matter, why can’t we simply go faster and catch it--if that’s what Kier wants.”