King's Sacrifice (9 page)

"Lord Sagan
should simply tell the boy, 'Your Majesty, we're going to war and if
you don't like it you can take a walk out the nearest air lock.' "
Rykilth's vapor darkened slightly.

"His
Majesty has the bomb and Sagan does not," said Olefsky, winking.

DiLuna glanced
significantly around the room. "Careful, my friend. Ears are
listening."

The Bear
shrugged. A grin split the bearded face. "By my lungs and liver,
what's Sagan going to do, shoot me for speaking the truth?"

They were
interrupted by orderlies, serving lunch: a huge platter of raw meat
and bread for Olefsky, a plate of fruit and rice for DiLuna, and a
plastic envelope of congealed red liquid for Rykilth.

"Gracious
Mother, accept our thanks for Your bounty," DiLuna prayed to the
Goddess.

Rykilth detached
a tube from the envelope, attached it to a tube inside his helmet,
and sucked up nourishment. The ochre color faded gradually in the
enjoyment of his repast. Bear Olefsky forked raw meat into his mouth,
wiped away the blood that dribbled down his chin with a hunk of
bread.

The orderlies
poured wine for the woman, deposited what looked to be a keg of ale
at Olefsky's side, asked if anything else was needed, and then
disappeared, leaving the three to their meal and their conversation.

"Just what
is the truth about the space-rotation bomb?" DiLuna questioned.

"That it
belongs to Dion Starfire. That he has it hidden away, under lock and
key. That he has it in his power to destroy us, to destroy Sagan, to
destroy the galaxy, maybe to destroy the universe, if he chooses."
Olefsky rolled his eyes, stuffed a wad of bread into his mouth,
washed it down with ale.

"And Lord
Sagan can't get it back? From a whelp who's still got his mother's
milk on his lips?" DiLuna made an impolite gesture.

"Sagan can
get the bomb anytime he chooses," Rykilth predicted. The red
liquid was nearly gone. It had a slight intoxicating effect; the
vapor-breather was in a more relaxed mood, his fog almost pure white.
The mists had thinned, two of his eyes were actually almost visible.
"What has there ever been that Sagan didn't get if he wanted
it?"

"One
thing," Bear said with unexpected solemnity. "The one thing
he wanted most—the crown. He pledged his word to Dion, you see.
Pledged it before the good God."

"Ah, well,
that settles it," said DiLuna, nodding. She worshiped a
different deity—or perhaps one could say a different aspect of
the same deity—but the warrior woman was devout and reverent in
her duties to the Goddess Mother. She understood.

Rykilth, who
believed in nothing except his own life-giving vapor, made a gurgling
sound—a sneer among vapor-breathers. The mist thickened, a
feint brown streak wafted up from the region around his neck. "Sagan
always has an angle. You can't tell me he doesn't. I trust
we're
not being played for fools—by both of them."

A line marred
DiLuna's forehead. She shot a swift, shrewd glance at the other two.
"We were each of us Sagan's enemy once. And what do we truly
know about this Starfire?"

The
vapor-breather's mist turned an ugly shade of naphthol-yellow. Bear
Olefsky set down his mug of ale, frowned at it as if it tasted bad.

DiLuna rose to
her feet. She was sixty years old, by her planet's reckoning, tall,
broad-shouldered. "I'm going to contact my ship. I'm leaving
tomorrow. If a decision has not been reached tonight, I'll take
matters into my own hands."

She turned,
looked directly into what was supposed to be a concealed cam, and
shook her long scalp lock of iron-gray hair. Gunmetal earrings
jangled. "I won't go crawling back to Peter Robes."

"Time for
me to switch chemical packs," Rykilth announced. "I believe
that I too, will make arrangements to leave tomorrow. I can only
tolerate existence in this oxygen-contaminated atmosphere so long.
What about you, Olefsky?"

The Bear
glowered into his mug, then looked up, eyes glinting. "Stomach
and spleen, I think you are wrong, both of you. And I think that
before you leave you two will pay me the money you owe me."

"So much
for our trusty allies," said the Warlord dryly. He gestured
toward the screen. "Still, I can hardly blame diem. That, Your
Majesty, is the result of your refusal to act."

Dion stared at
die screen, frowned, the foil lips petulant. "You're not angry
at them?"

"Angry?
Over what?"

"This—this
disloyalty."

"Loyalty!"
Sagan snorted. "The vapor-breather's translator device wouldn't
know how to interpret the word. Your royal blood is so much water to
him. Talk to him of your divine right to rule and he'll drift off to
sleep in a cloud so thick you'll never find him. Talk to him of money
and the mists will part. His star systems are impoverished, with only
one resource: people. A mixed bag of human and alien life-forms, they
have one thing in common—they want what others have and they
don't and they're willing to die to get it. And they're willing to
back you because they like the odds."

Dion switched
the cam to himself, saw his own image on the screen. He was startled
by his appearance. His skin was pale, purple smudges shadowed his
eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept the night
through.

"Meaning,"
he said coldly, "that they would back another if the odds were
right."

"If the
odds were right . . . or if they improved."

Dion heard the
implied threat, chose to ignore it.

"As for
DiLuna," Sagan continued, "she is loyal only to her
Goddess. She despised the Blood Royal once because we worshiped the
Creator; she was jealous of the power of the Order of Adamant. Now
that the Blood Royal are, in essence, gone from the universe, and the
Order of Adamant is no more, DiLuna sees her chance to bring the
worship of the Mother to the galaxy. Hers is a holy war."

"How could
she expect me to help her in that?"

"DiLuna has
a daughter about your age, I believe; a priestess ordained in the
worship of the Goddess. Rest assured, young man, that if you manage
to overthrow Robes and gain your throne, DiLuna will plot to make
this daughter your queen. You might not find it all that bad,
however. Her daughters have the reputation for being as skilled as
their mother in bed."

Warm blood
rushed to Dion's cheeks. He turned stiffly away, but not before he
caught a glimpse of the Warlord's sardonic smile. Dion's shame
burned; he felt like a schoolboy caught watching a porno vid.

How did Sagan
know? Was my unease and discomfort around the baroness that obvious?

Dion was not
quite sexually inexperienced, not anymore. Kings throughout the ages
have always had their pick of amoretti and the attractive, vibrant,
and exciting Starfire was no exception. But Dion's ventures had been
less than satisfactory.

The women in
whom he took an interest were screened, examined, searched. The
evening was directed, managed, staged. The centurions remained
standing outside the door the entire time. And although the women had
assured the young man in the morning that he'd been wonderful, an
angel, he knew himself that he was clumsy, awkward, inadequate. It is
difficult to enjoy the softness of silken sheets when you are
surrounded by a ring of steel. But at least he'd always supposed that
those feelings were private, his to hide and nurse like a wound in
the darkness.

Now he saw that
even his shame was laid bare. Dion suddenly hated Sagan for knowing,
hated him for displaying his knowledge, for using it as a weapon.

"And then,
of course, we still have the problem of Abdiel. Or perhaps not a
problem for you, Your Majesty. Have you been in contact with him?"
the Warlord asked with cool nonchalance.

Dion flared,
rounded on him. "Meaning is
he
the one advising me? Is he
attempting to use me?"

"Well, is
he, Your Majesty?"

"No more
than you, my lord," Dion replied. "And with about the same
measure of success."

The two eyed
each other, blade tips touched, sparked. It was Dion, this time, who
lowered his weapon, stepped out of the circle.

"And where
does Your Majesty think he is going?"

"I'm tired.
I'm going to lie down."

"You still
have a great deal of work to do, sire."

"Work! I've
done nothing but work these last three days! I don't count sheep when
I try to sleep, I count battalions. Supply lines trail me through my
dreams. The flash of laser fire wakes me and the sound of bombs ..."
The screams of the dying, the dead eyes staring at me, the blood on
my hands, on my uniform.

He bit off the
words, shook off the memories. "One problem remains, my lord,
that you have not seen fit to address. I've stated publicly, time and
again, that I will not make war upon my people. Now, suddenly, you
want me to announce cheerfully that I've been lying through my
teeth?"

Sagan waved his
hand, brushing away gnats. "It is a king's prerogative to change
his mind. Say you're giving in, bowing to public pressure. Say the
people demand that you free them from a corrupt, defiled presidency.
Say you've had a sign from God—"

Dion looked up
swiftly at the Warlord, thinking that Sagan might have spoken those
last words with some deeper, underlying meaning. He half
expected—half hoped—to find the dark eyes staring into
his, their shadowed gaze probing his soul.

The Warlord
wasn't paying attention to Dion at all. He was glancing over some
reports that had just been relayed to him. He had not spoken from
penetrating insight, but out of exasperation.

"Two more
systems have seceded," he announced with satisfaction. "They
haven't yet thrown in with us, but they will, once we make it clear
where we stand. Well? Has Your Majesty made his decision?"

The sarcasm
flicked like a whip on already bleeding flesh. Dion flinched,
remained silent.

"It may not
even be necessary to go to war," Sagan pursued. "Fear of
the space-rotation bomb will drive many to support your cause."

"I don't
want them to come to me out of fear!"

"Then it's
quite likely, sire, that they won't come to you at all!"

"It's a
terrible responsibility," Dion said softly, "knowing that I
hold the lives of billions of people in my care. Knowing that with
one word, one command, I can end them. . .

"And how
you love it!" Sagan spoke each word clearly and distinctly,
moved a step nearer with each word until he loomed over the young
man, surrounded him with metal and with flame. "How you love the
power, the adulation. Like a bright and shining silver globe, falling
into your hands from above. Think back to your rite of initiation. Do
you remember the silver globe, Your Majesty?" His voice was low,
lethal. "Do you remember it falling, remember the spikes,
remember your hands impaled upon the spikes?"

Dion remembered.
He stared at his hands, saw the spikes tear flesh, sever tendons,
shatter bone, felt the pain flash up his arms, explode in his brain.
. . .

"Power is
like the bright and shining silver globe, Your Majesty. You won it
and now you hold it easily. You see yourself reflected in its silver
surface, you see youth and beauty and adoring crowds. And then,
suddenly, the spikes! Your hands impaled upon the silver, shining
globe. Not so easy to hold on to now, is it, sire? Not so easy to
look on your reflection and see it smeared with blood! But you must
hold on to it and endure the pain."

The Warlord's
hand opened, palm empty. "Or drop it."

Illusion. The
silver ball, the spikes, the blood, the pain—all illusion.
Special effects, created by Sagan and Maigrey to impress him. An
All-Seeing, All-Knowing Being controlling the universe, flaunting His
Omnipotence by impaling a boy's hands on a silver ball!

Isn't it? Isn't
it, Platus? Dion cried silently to his dead mentor. You and I—we
reasoned away God before I was six years old. I am alone. I alone am
responsible. I alone hold the bright and shining silver ball. That's
right, isn't it? Tell me that's right, Platus!

Dion's hands
shook. He clenched them to fists, lowered them to his sides. "And
if I refuse?" Blue eyes, clear and bright as silver, looked into
eyes darkly shadowed behind a golden helm. "If I refuse to go to
war?"

Derek Sagan
stood silent.

The blue eyes
did not waver, did not lower their gaze.

The dark eyes
narrowed, grew darker. "I will not let this moment pass me by."

"And what
about me, my lord?"

Sagan raised an
eyebrow, lips twisted. "Kings, especially foolish kings, have
been imprisoned before now ... or worse. You've been of use to me.
You started the ball rolling. It will speed along now under its own
momentum."

"I see. You
swore your oath of allegiance to me before God, just as you swore it
long ago to my uncle. You broke your oath to him. Now you will break
it to me."

"If my soul
is eternally damned for the first, Your Majesty, it hardly matters
what happens to me over the second. I expect you will want to
announce your decision this evening, following the banquet that is
being given in honor of our guests. Consider well what that decision
will be. By your leave, sire."

The Warlord
bowed, red cape falling in a tide of crimson over his shoulders. He
turned, walked out of the room, left Dion standing, alone.

From somewhere
deep inside him, or from somewhere far beyond him, came the voice.

It wasn't
Abdiel's. Dion knew the mind-seizer's voice, had heard its seductive
whisperings often in the past months. It had been easy to evade him,
refuse to respond. He knew the mind-seizer, or thought he did. He
assumed he knew the man's game. Offers of power, glory, wealth.
Meaningless. Abdiel, after all, could give Dion nothing that he
didn't already have.