Sagan was up late the night Sparafucile arrived to make his report. The Warlord had been studying aerial recon maps of Snaga Ohme's estate, but had long since abandoned his work. Sitting, pondering, he was thinking of Maigrey's choice of reading material. Yeats. He didn't like it. She had probed more deeply into his mind, perhaps, than he had realized or intended. He was half-considering confronting her when the officer on night watch reported the arrival of the assassin.
"Send him in."
Silent as a stalking cat, Sparafucile slid through the door, moving instinctively to melt into the shadows of the Warlord's room until the door was shut and sealed behind him.
"Well?" the Warlord demanded abruptly. "I haven't heard from you." He was tired and irritated at being tired.
"There has been nothing to say, Sagan Lord." Sparafucile stepped into the light, shrugged.
"Abdiel has had no visitors?"
"Only those I tell you before, Sagan Lord. The creatures of Snaga Ohme."
"And the boy?"
"He is with him, Sagan Lord."
"The mercenary and the woman?"
"Them, too, Sagan Lord. But I think they are prisoners, not guests."
The Warlord interrogated him with a glance.
"My instruments show two life-forms always in one place in the same part of house."
"Interesting. I have no doubt you are right. They're not dead?"
"Instrument readings indicate two warm bodies. Sometimes the bodies grow very warm," Sparafucile added with a leering grin. "They find interesting way to pass the time, eh?"
Sagan pointedly ignored this last salacious intimation. Tapping on his desk with a crooked forefinger, he considered the assassin's more pertinent information. "Of course, Abdiel would keep Tusca alive because the boy would know if his friend died. But when Dion is gone ... or otherwise distracted '. . . say, the night of the Event ..." The Warlord extended his finger, traced a minus sign on the metal. "A pity," he said coolly. "Tusca was an adequate warrior. Something might have been made of him. But he has only his father and the lady to thank."
The Warlord shook himself out of his preoccupation, returned his gaze to the assassin. "Anything else?"
Sparafucile hesitated. "It may be nothing, Sagan Lord, but someone in the house is"—the assassin spread his hands to indicate a guess—"target shooting."
"Target shooting?" The Warlord frowned, stared at him. "How do you know?"
"Don't know, for certain, Sagan Lord. Instrument readings indicate bursts of energy occurring at intervals in lower part of house. Always same place, but different times during day and night."
"It's not a machine of some sort?"
Sparafucile indicated, by a wiggling of his hands, that the Warlord's conjecture was as good as his.
"Target shooting," Sagan reflected aloud. "That presents some interesting possibilities. Continue monitoring, my friend, and inform me through the commlink of any other developments. There will be no more reports in person from now on, Sparafucile. Matters grow too critical. I don't want you to let Abdiel out of your sight."
"Yes, Sagan Lord. I see soldiers on base ready to march, perhaps?"
"You have very good eyes, my friend. Sometimes it might be better to keep them shut, like your mouth."
Sparafucile winked, grinned, and nodded his misshapen head in acquiescence.
"The Event takes place tomorrow night." The Warlord placed the tips of the fingers of both hands together, finalizing his plans. "Abdiel's space shuttle is near the house, I presume? His ship in orbit around the planet?"
"Yes, Sagan Lord."
"The shuttle is guarded by the mind-dead?"
"Yes, Sagan Lord."
"You can handle the mind-dead, can't you, my friend?"
Sparafucile's lips parted, showing sharp-edged, felinelike teeth.
"Very well. Your task will be to prevent Abdiel from fleeing this planet. He will attempt to do so on the night of the Event. How you are to manage this, I leave to you, Sparafucile—"
"I blow him up, then, Sagan Lord."
"No, you fool!" The Warlord's patience cracked beneath his weariness and the strain. He regained control of himself almost immediately. "He may have the boy with him. You will merely keep him grounded until I arrive to deal with him. Do you understand?"
"Not altogether, Sagan Lord—"
"Do you understand what you are supposed to do?"
"Oh, yes, Sagan Lord."
"Return to your post." The Warlord rose, flexed his aching shoulder muscles, rubbed his back.
Sparafucile glided out the door. Pausing as it opened, he turned to inquire, "How is lady?"
"I can't think why her health would be any business of yours."
"You tell lady Sparafucile sends regards." The assassin leered.
"I'll pass that along," Sagan said dryly, "between poetry readings." He paused. "Oh, my friend, if the occasion arises and you can do so without jeopardizing your mission, assist the mercenary Tusca to escape. Then bring him to me."
"What if he not want to come?"
"I said, bring him to me."
"Yes, Sagan Lord."
The Warlord shut the door, hearing as he did so the rhythmic tramp of the centurions arriving to escort the assassin off the base. Sagan was ready for his bed, but he stood long moments in the darkness lit only by the faint night-glow of various instruments and computer screens.
"Target shooting," he repeated to himself, frowning, not liking the inexplicable. He turned it over in his mind, considering. No answers came to him, however, and finally he put the matter aside, put thoughts of rest aside, and continued his work.
"Well, what do you think of it?" the mind-seizer asked.
"I'm . . . not sure," Dion admitted.
He held in his hands what appeared to be four small round metal disks, each with a crystal inside, one large metal, crystal-bearing disk, and a small tube that fit inside the palm of his hand. "What is it?"
"A weapon. The gun you will use to kill the Warlord."
"A gun?" Dion appeared skeptical.
"Precisely. These metal disks are cumulators," Abdiel explained. "You place the cumulators on various parts of your body—two on your breast, two at your waist, and one—the largest—over your sternum. When activated by a signal from the gun, each cumulator sends a beam of laser light into the tube in your hand. The tube collects the five beams and concentrates them into one extraordinarily lethal beam that will destroy anything at which you are aiming."
"This . . . this is what I'm to use to kill ..." Dion left the sentence hanging, studied the gun, trying to appear vastly knowledgeable. "But how do we sneak this into the Adonian's house? Won't his security monitors detect it?"
"His monitors would if the cumulators were activated. But when you enter his house, Your Majesty, the cumulators will be completely drained. Ohme will detect nothing except metal and crystals—your jewelry, my king. The tube you hold now will be encased in a different setting—it will be made to look like a belt buckle."
"But then, how do I charge the . . . the cumulators?"
"The same way you charge the bloodsword, Dion. With your body and your mind."
"Really? Can I? That's incredible!"
"Isn't it," Abdiel remarked coolly. "When the time is right, you have simply to concentrate your thoughts upon the cumulators, which have been designed to work with the particular genetic characteristics of the Blood Royal. Position them over the main nerve bundles in your body, and when you direct your mental energies on them, they will absorb that energy and activate. You have then only to aim and fire."
"Aim and fire!" Dion repeated, studying the gun admiringly.
"You will notice, when you practice firing the gun, that you will feel a warm spot on your skin directly opposite the end of the weapon. A protective coating covers the back of the weapon, prevents the laser beam from doing you any harm. The beam is so powerful, however, that its heat seeps through. Do not be alarmed by it."
"No, no
, I won't." Dion barely heard. He was preoccupied in positioning the cumulators on his body.
"You will have no trouble entering the Adonian's," Abdiel continued, "but I must warn you that Ohme has sensors planted throughout his mansion. Once you charge the cumulators, you must act swiftly, or his men will detect you. If you keep to our plan, you should have no trouble luring the Warlord to you."
"No trouble at all!" Dion said, with a flash of exultation. He sobered a moment later, however. "But what about the Lady Maigrey? She mustn't be around—"
"I will answer for the Lady Maigrey," Abdiel said mildly. "Of that, my king, you may rest assured."
A target range was set up in the lower level of the prefab house; the mind-dead removed the collapsible walls to several boxlike rooms and opened them into one long rectangular area. Dion practiced firing the gun at intervals during the day, working an hour or so at a time. In his intense, grim eagerness, he would have worked longer and harder. But Abdiel cautioned against the young man becoming overfatigued, blunting his sharp edge.
Dion arranged the five cumulators over his body for what seemed like millions of times, practiced directing his mental energies toward them. He could have done it in his sleep. He knew because he had done it in his sleep—in his dreams, at least—every night since Abdiel had given him the weapon and instructed him in its design, its use. Every night, in his dreams, he used the gun to kill the Warlord.
Down in the target range, on the evening before the Event,
Dion showed off his newly acquired skill for Abdiel and Mikael.
"I can activate the cumulators in only a few moments," he informed them, demonstrating. "Like this. And then—"
Lifting the gun in one smooth, rapid motion, he aimed at his target and fired. The target was a hologram of a man—a tall man with broad shoulders clad in full body armor and helm decorated with the phoenix rising from the flarries.
The shot went through the mouth, the one place left unprotected by the man's helm. "Watch this," Dion said. "Mikael, set the target moving."
Mikael did as he was instructed. The hologram began to dodge. Dion turned his back, spun around, and fired, hitting his mark exactly. The target bobbed and weaved defensively. The young man crouched and jumped and hit it solidly from every conceivable angle. Mikael at last shut the target off. Dion, panting, looked at Abdiel. The mind-seizer nodded in satisfaction.
"Excellent, my king. Remarkable, in fact. You are drawing upon the power of the Blood Royal, the power they told you you couldn't handle. An excellent irony. You will use the talent the Warlord denied you to kill him. Mikael, take the gun."
"But I want to keep it with me," Dion protested. "I have to practice. I think I can cut down my time—"
"You are quite fast enough now, Dion. Faster than Mikael. You should rest, my king. Tomorrow night will be a momentous occasion in your life. You must be ready."
Dion was ready to argue, the sensual lips pursed in the stubborn pout that made him resemble his late uncle.
"Good night, Dion," Abdiel hinted.
The young man handed the gun to the disciple with an ill grace and left them, another of the mind-dead appearing on silent command to escort him to his room.
Mikael and Abdiel remained standing in the target range, waiting patiently, hearing the boy's footsteps move far away.
Abdiel reached into the robes that encircled his body, withdrew from the winding-sheet folds another gun.
"Identical," Mikael said, holding the two, one in each hand, comparing them.
"Almost," Abdiel amended. He retrieved the gun Dion had been using and hid it securely in the folds of his robe. "Take this to him just prior to our leaving. Don't give him time to examine it closely. It's difficult to discern the difference, but an astute eye, studying the gun at leisure, could tell."
"How certain are you that he will do this deed, master? It is one thing to shoot at a hologram, another to kill a living man."
"He will. His mind crawls with jealousy, fear, the desire for vengeance. He's killed before this, too. Much as the murder horrified him,.he felt secretly exhilarated by the idea of having power over life and death. Besides, what young man does not dream of destroying his father and marrying his mother?"
"His mother, master? I thought his mother was dead—"
"I will explain the concept to you another time, my dear. I am not at leisure to discuss Freudian psychology."
"Yes, master. What about the prisoners?"
"Have them executed," Abdiel said casually, "but not until after we have left for the Event. By then, if the boy senses Tusca's death at all, he will be too excited and keyed up to fully assimilate it."
"I understand, my master."
"Disassemble the house and have my shuttlecraft prepared for lift-off. This planet will be in chaos and, when I return with the bomb, I want to be able to leave immediately."
Mikael bowed in acknowledgment and left to make the necessary arrangements.
Abdiel wended his way back to his sauna. It was nearly time for his bedtime snack—four pills and an injection. After that, an early period of sleep. Tomorrow night's work promised to be strenuous, mentally and physically draining. He would be exhausted for days afterward.
I must look past that, he counseled himself, look to the rewards, the compensations.
Abdiel composed his body on the sofa, lifted the hookah's pipe, and put it between his lips. He summoned up a vision of the boy lying on his bed, hands beneath his head, expending an enormous amount of energy attempting to relax.
"A momentous occasion, my king," Abdiel reiterated, sucking on the pipe. 'The most momentous in your life." He drew the smoke into his lungs, spoke to the wisps that curled out of his mouth. "Your death."
Dion lay upon the bed, fidgeted and twitched. He knew he should rest, but he couldn't get comfortable. His supper sat untasted on the table in his room. He had tried to eat, but he was so tense the food wouldn't go past the tightening of his throat.
Abdiel had seen inside Dion clearly. The young man could, at this moment, have killed Derek Sagan with the cold-blooded efficiency and dispassion of a professional terminator. In his mind, Dion had moved beyond the murder. The deed was finished, over and done. And it left him standing at the edge of a void.
What would he have accomplished? The removal of his greatest enemy, certainly. The freeing of Lady Maigrey, the ability to rescue John Dixter. But had it taken him one step toward his real, ultimate goal? Had it taken him one step nearer the throne? No, not if things went as Abdiel had them planned.
"And who is he to tell me what to do?" Dion asked himself, sitting up on the edge of the bed. "I'm grateful to him, of course. Without him, I would never have known the truth. But I am king, not Abdiel. And though all kings have their advisers, I'm the one who must make the final decision.
"And I've made it," he announced softly. "I've considered the matter as Platus taught me. I've set the weights in the scale of balance. I know that there are risks to what I plan, but the benefits outweigh them, cause the scale to tip in my favor. Tomorrow night, the most powerful people in the galaxy will be assembled together. I might never have this chance again. "
He stared at the five marks on his palm. Abdiel had hinted that he wanted to bond with the boy again, but Dion— remembering all too clearly Tusk's look of shock and revulsion—had pretended not to understand. It had been worth the pain once, to know the truth. But never again. And he would continue to be careful, as he had been for the past few days, to keep the fortress of his mind guarded and secure.
Abdiel might approve what I intend to do, but then again, he might not. I don't want to waste my time, Dion told himself, in pointless arguments.
The truth was that he wanted to take everyone completely by surprise.
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold . . ."
Maigrey paused, and sighed. She had found what she sought. She knew it; the wor
ds seemed to spring out of the page as if they'd been printed in red ink, as if dipped in blood.
She should really, she supposed, slip over to the spaceplane and run a simulation. But that would take energy, energy she didn't have. Disrupting the electrical system, forcing open the door, dealing with the centurions both here and those guarding the spaceplane. And all for what? For proving to herself what she already knew.
Maigrey closed the slender volume of poetry, placed it on a shelf. Lying down on her bed, she sought vainly for sleep.
Chapter Five
He shall have his fine armor, and every man that sets eyes on it shall be amazed. I wish I could bide him from death as easily . . .
Homer, The Iliad, translation by W. H. D. Rouse
Maigrey sat before a mirror in her chambers aboard the Warlord's shuttlecraft. Brushing her hair, she gazed at her reflection and it seemed to her as if she had become her reflection—hard, smooth, cold.
The starjewel was gone, lost to her forever. She might get it back . . . she would get it back (she reminded herself to think positively) this night. She had to. It was the only way to save John Dixter. But its fire had gone out. Once she imagined her star would go nova, explode in a brilliant fiery ball, its death visible to countless generations for light-years after. But no. Her star had imploded, sunk in upon itself, become a small dark spot, lost in the vast darkness.
She had failed everyone, it seemed: Sagan, Semele, John Dixter, Dion. Now add to that list two more: herself and God. Her intentions had been good. . . . What was it they said? The road to hell is paved that way. Or did she have the right to comfort herself with even that poor excuse?
No, Maigrey had to admit it. Her own ambition led her down this road. She should not curse the darkness when she herself had blown out the light.
And what of the future? She saw no future. She could see nothing at all. Though she might grope her way forward, it was like being trapped in a maze. Reaching out blindly in all directions, she found herself continually running up against a blank wall.
Listlessly, she threw down her hairbrush, turned away from the mirror. She had better start dressing. On the bed lay an evening gown borrowed from some soldier on the base. The dress wasn't particularly well made or becoming. But it would do. . . .
King's Test Page 36
