King's Test

by Margaret Weis

  Maigrey gasped for breath, closed eyes that burned from the light. Sweat chilled on her body beneath the armor. The bloodsword's glow dimmed, nearly went out.

  "Abdiel ..."

  "My lady, I'm with you!"

  Maigrey opened her eyes, tried desperately to blink away the blinding afterimage. "Marcus! Keep down! Don't move!"

  The centurion ignored her command, lunged through the jungle to try to reach her side.

  A robot Corasian popped out from behind a tree, fired. The blast struck the centurion in the back. He fell heavily to the ground and lay without moving.

  "A kill."

  The darkness around her was lifeless as the artificial jungle. The target ranges were soundproofed. No one can hear me scream, Maigrey realized. No one had heard Snaga Ohme's scream before the chain cut it off. The door's sealed shut. No way out.

  Maigrey felt Abdiel's probe, felt the mind-seizer try to enter her brain.

  The bloodsword! Those who use the bloodsword are connected mentally.

  Feverishly, she jerked the needles out of her palm, tossed the sword on the ground, far from her. She might have used it to defend herself, but logic told her the sword could be a greater danger to her than a help. Only one weapon would serve against Abdiel—and that was Maigrey's own mind and she wasn't strong enough to wield such a weapon alone.

  She tried to establish the link with Sagan.

  Abdiel intervened. "Calling for help, are you, my dear? I'm afraid your call can't be completed as dialed. There's no one on the other end. The Warlord is dead. And so is Dion. It's come down to you and me, fair lady. Only the two of us."

  Dead! Both of them dead!

  The vision came to her of Dion pointing a gun, of the Warlord on his knees before the boy, of deadly beams shooting out of both ends of the treacherous weapon, the murderer dying even as he killed. The vision was real, too real. Surreal. Maigrey burned with shared pain, but she didn't feel the emptiness of death.

  Somehow, Abdiel had been deceived, but Maigrey didn't dare concentrate on the Warlord long enough to learn the birth. The mind-seizer believes them both to be dead, she thought. Let him.

  But it meant that she would have to face him alone.

  Maigrey struggled against the probe that was like a worm trying to bore its way into her consciousness, seeking out weak, soft spots in her defense.

  "You have the starjewel with you, don't you, fair lady?" Abdiel continued. "I watched you take it from the corpse. "

  That horrible moment came back to her: the dead eyes staring at her, the terrible distortion of the bloated face, the blood on the Adonian's wrists.

  Maigrey pushed the memory away, deliberately kept her mind dark and empty while she tried to shut down circuits, erase anything in her consciousness that could be used to destroy her.

  "Don't waste your pity on the Adonian, Lady Maigrey. He never intended to give the star back to you. It was an ambush. As you suspected, Ohme realized that the starjewel is the missing element—the starjewel arms the bomb. He lured you to this range to murder you, assuming that with you dead, he would be able to recover the bomb. Unfortunately for the Adonian. my disciple arrived on the scene first. Would you like to witness the Adonian's execution, my lady? You will find it most entertaining."

  Maigrey saw a vivid picture in her mind, realized she was watching Ohme's last agonized moments of life. The body twisted and jerked as the chain tightened slowly around the neck. He gasped, fought, struggled . . . and then, suddenly, Maigrey was Ohme! She was hanging from the tree. The chain was slicing through her flesh, cutting off her air. The pain was excruciating. She couldn't breathe. Terrified, she gasped, fought, struggled . . .

  No! It wasn't happening to her! She was herself, not the Adonian.

  Maigrey regained her own reality, but with her success came the numb despair of knowing that it had actually been failure. Abdiel was the one who had succeeded. He had gained entry to her mind. And he knew, because he'd been there before, how to open the Pandora's box Maigrey kept stored in the attic of her subconscious.

  "Our host is dead. 'The party's over,' as the old song goes." Abdiel appeared before her, moving out of the darkness. In his hand, he held a nuke lamp; the harsh glare lit his face, shone brightly in the shadowless eyes, gleamed off the decaying flesh of head and hand. "I will escort you to your spaceplane, Lady Maigrey. You will invite me inside and turn over to me the bomb and the starjewel. And then, if you are very good, my dear, I might let you join Derek Sagan in whatever afterlife he finds himself."

  Part of Maigrey wanted to fight with her bare hands, to hurl herself at the old man and claw his face with her nails. But part of her remained cowering in the attic that had become her mind, weeping, afraid to move, afraid of so many, many things that she knew were waiting to reach out and rend her apart.

  Abdiel, a pleasant smile on his lips, came closer and reached out his left hand. Needles flashed. Maigrey shrank back before him, but he caught hold of her arm, her right arm. Lifting it, he turned her right hand palm upward. . . .

  The centurion, Marcus, lay in the darkness, silent, unmoving, watching. The blast, though it had knocked him down, had not penetrated the armor. He lay where he fell, feigning death, waiting for his chance, praying only that somehow God would put a weapon into his hands.

  He had no idea what was wrong with the Starlady, but obviously this man had some type of mental hold over her. Marcus willed her silently to fight against it, was shaken and appalled when he saw her hurl away the bloodsword, her only means of defense. The weapon hit the ground, slid to a stop near his hand.

  Marcus stared at it. A weapon. God had answered his prayer, but He demanded a sacrifice in return. The bloodsword could be used safely by only the Blood Royal. Anyone of ordinary birth and genetic structure jabbing those needles into his hand would inject himself with death. And there was the possibility he might do so and still not be able to activate the weapon. The centurion had been trained by the Warlord in the techniques of mental discipline, but he doubted if he had the knowledge and the ability to channel his nerve impulses correctly, the strength to combat the inevitable pain that must go with the sword's use.

  He heard someone moving through the jungle and knew by the voice it was the man the Starlady called Abdiel. The voice had a brittle quality to it. Marcus guessed the man must be old. Perhaps I won't need a weapon, he thought. My bare hands . . .

  But then Marcus heard another set of footfalls, coming—by the sound of it—behind those of the old man. Probably the disciple the old man had mentioned, the one who had killed the Adonian.

  Light flared, harsh and white—a nuke lamp. Marcus froze, holding his breath. The beam played over him, flicked past him. leaving him in shadow. The footfalls moved on. Cautiously. the centurion opened his eyes, saw an old man clad in magenta robes. His disciple, armed with a lasgun, walked behind, guarding the old man's back.

  The disciple would hear Marcus move. The lasgun—at that range—could blow his head off. It wouldn't help the lady to be killed in her defense, he realized. I have to live ... at least a little while longer.

  Abdiel held the nuke lamp up, shining it on Maigrey. She was like an animal, hypnotized by the light, unable to flee the death that approached. The mind-seizer reached out to her.

  Stealthily, Marcus's right hand slid forward, fingertips touching the hilt of the bloodsword. Moving swiftly, silently, he edged it back toward him until he could get a firm grip on it. The centurion hesitated only a moment, long enough to whisper a prayer to the God of his Warlord. Then he jabbed the five needles into his palm.

  Searing fire flared through his nerves, tongues of flame licked at his skull, his heart lurched wildly in his chest. Marcus nearly died in that instant. It took every ounce of strength and courage he possessed, adding to it some he didn't know he had, to keep from screaming out in the agony.

  But he didn't die. He felt, through the awful pain, the tinglings of energy, saw the sword begin to glow with a weak and
feeble radiance. The pain, he realized, was caused by the virus connecting his body with the bloodsword, joining them together, making them one. It had worked! The bloodsword was his to command!

  Drawing on the mental discipline his lord had taught him, Marcus used the pain, used it to operate the sword in his hand. The blade flared more brightly. He didn't have much time; the sword's light would be noticed.

  Rising, hurling himself forward in the same motion, Marcus swung the sword in a slashing arc, bringing it down on the disciple's hand, the hand holding the lasgun, severing the hand from the body. Mikael did not cry out, but turned toward his attacker, stared at him. The disciple's eyes registered nothing, neither pain nor shock nor fear. Marcus's return stroke slashed Mikael's head from his neck. The head crashed to the floor, the eyes unchanged, looking in death very much as they had in life.

  The centurion whirled to face the old man, raised the sword to hack the feeble, bent, and misshapen body in half Marcus halted, stroke arrested. He was disconcerted to see Abdiel regarding him with almost amused interest, a pleasant smile playing about the cracked lips. The mind-seizer raised his right hand and the centurion found, suddenly, that his arm wouldn't move at his command. But the arm would move, it seemed, for Abdiel.

  Marcus watched, shocked, terrified, seeing and feeling his own arm come under the command of someone else. The centurion's right arm, carrying the bloodsword in its hand, offered that sword to Abdiel.

  "How very brave. And how very foolish." Abdiel plucked the sword's needles easily from Marcus's bleeding palm, with as much nonchalance as if the guard had been offering him a flower, and tucked the weapon into his belt. "Your use of the bloodsword, centurion, linked your mind to mine, much as the lady and I will be linked now."

  Abdiel opened wide his left hand. Marcus saw needles flash in the harsh, white light, needles protruding from the flesh of the old man's palm. The Starlady was staring at the old man as if bound in a riveting trance. Her body trembled. The old man caught hold of her hand. His touch jolted her to action. She fought back, flying into a violent, frenzied struggle to escape him. He gripped her tightly, thrust the needles in his palm deep into her hand.

  Maigrey moaned, sank to the floor on her knees, her hand still held fast in the old man's grasp. Abdiel stroked her head as it rested against his thigh.

  "There, there, my dear," he said, soothing her.

  Then, whispering to her softly, he coaxed her to her feet. Whimpering, she clung to him. As a parent assists a sick and feeble child, the old man placed a gentle arm around her waist, led the stumbling woman toward the door.

  Marcus was helpless to act, unable to move.

  The door opened. Abdiel, turning, flashed the lamp into the centurion's eyes. "You are a dead man," he said, and released Marcus from his mental grip. Holding on to the Starlady, Abdiel walked through the door and out into the dark and deserted hallway beyond.

  Marcus slumped to the floor, like a puppet whose strings are cut. A feverish chill shook his body, a throbbing ache pounded in his head—first symptoms of the disease that would shortly and inevitably kill him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Things fall apart . . .

  William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

  Dion stared in disbelief at a smoking hole burned through the left side of his vest. The cumulator was shattered. The laser beam had struck it, blown it up. Dion's stunned gaze traveled from the destroyed cumulator to the gun in his hand and from there to a hole blown in the wall to the left of the Warlord. A black streak of carbon scoring along the cheek of Sagan's helm indicated how close the deadly, needle-thin beam had come to him . . . and how far.

  "What happened?" Dion asked dazedly. Then he began to shake.

  He must, Sagan realized, have answered his own question.

  "Abdiel happened," the Warlord said, rising from his kneeling stance. Reaching out his hand, he removed the gun from the boy's nerveless grasp, examined it with interest. "A Judas gun. I haven't seen one of these in many years. It fires both directions, front and back, betraying its master."

  "You—you knew!" Dion stammered, teeth clicking together. The pain of his wound had hit him now, shriveling his stomach. The stench of burned flesh—of his own burned flesh—made him sick.

  "I didn't know, but I suspected as much. The Blood Royal occasionally used such killing devices on each other."

  "Why didn't you tell me?" Dion put his hand over the wound in a vain attempt to stanch the bleeding. The metal of the cumulator had been driven into his flesh; the crystal had exploded, piercing his skin with tiny, razor-sharp shards.

  "Would you have believed me? You had to find out for yourself."

  "You risked your life—and mine—so that I could prove to myself what a fool I've been!" Dion said bitterly.

  "It wasn't much of a risk," Sagan remarked dryly.

  "Why?" Dion flared. "Because you didn't think I had the guts to do it?"

  "Let's just say, my liege, that it was well God turned your hand or we both would be dead right now."

  "God didn't turn my hand!" Dion spoke through teeth clenched against a welling nausea. His body trembled, but not with the pain. It was the intensity of his emotion. "7 turned my hand! I missed deliberately! I let you live!"

  "Indeed, my liege. And why?"

  Dion straightened, lifted his head, willed himself to stand firm. "Because I can use you. Because I intend to use you. Because you're no good to me dead!"

  Sagan eyed the boy silently for a moment. Then the Warlord's lips parted in a rare, dark smile. "I begin to think I've underestimated you, Your Majesty. You may make a king yet!" He held the gun out to the young man. "But you're still a long way from your throne. Next time you use one of these, check the coating on the back. You should find a thick, protective metallic substance. If the coating flakes off with your thumb, like this"—he demonstrated, sending chips of white paint floating to the floor—"then you will feel far more than a 'warm sensation' against your skin when you fire it."

  Dion accepted the gun in silence. Tossing it to the floor, he stomped on it, crushed it beneath the heel of his boot.

  "What a fool!" he said to himself, tears stinging his eyes. "What a fool!"

  "Are you in much pain?" Sagan asked.

  "No," Dion lied, swiftly and ashamedly wiping his hands across his eyes. His face was white, his skin cold and clammy to the touch. His breathing was shallow, irregular.

  "Good. If you had been," the Warlord continued with a slight half-smile, "I would have suggested you use whatever mental powers Abdiel taught you to block it. I need your help—"

  "Maigrey!" Dion remembered. "You said she was danger! What— Is—"

  "I don't know." Sagan crossed the room, heading for the exit. "You forced me to expend my concentration on you. And now I can't sense her, contact her. I—" Flinging open the door, barreling through it, he nearly ran down a man attempting to enter.

  "Marcus!"

  The centurion staggered, collapsed. Sagan caught him. "What is it, Marcus? What's happened?"

  The centurion's hands gripped his lord, hanging on to him tightly, determined not to fall. Sagan, supporting his weakening soldier, felt something wet on his arm. Looking down, he saw a thin trickle of red coming from the centurion's right hand. The Warlord turned Marcus's palm to the light. Five fresh needle marks oozed blood.

  The Warlord understood. "God help us," he prayed silently. "God help her!"

  The Lord Abbot of the Order of Dark Lightning spirited his captive through the Adonian's crowded house with swiftness and ease. No one saw them, though they passed many people so close that the old man's magenta robes brushed their skin. People saw Abdiel only when he wanted them to see Abdiel.

  Dark Lightning—thus the mind-seizers had named their Order. A sizzling bolt flashing from one mind to another, unseen, unheard, illuminating, devastating. The dark lightning had struck Maigrey, struck her down, seemingly, left nothing in her mind except ashes. She accompanied Abdiel meekl
y, going where he led her, doing what he told her.

  The mind-seizer was surprised at the woman's docile behavior, though every few moments, he injected her with terrors drawn from her own inner being. She was reacting exactly the way he'd hoped she would react. And that made him suspicious. Abdiel didn't trust her. He knew there was a part of her he could never control. He would have preferred a struggle, some small resistance that he could overcome with the pain he knew so well how to inflict, rather than her numb lassitude.

  Seated inside the tram car, hurtling toward the front gate, Abdiel studied his victim. The two were no longer bonded; he had removed the needles. He was deep inside her, his poison working. Her face in the bright light of the tram was fixed, immobile, without expression. The gray eyes were like the eyes of the mind-seizer's own mind-dead disciples.

  But she isn't, Abdiel said to himself, watching her distrustfully. She's retreated. Hiding in there somewhere. Or perhaps . . . He sat back, paused to consider. Perhaps not. Perhaps the Guardian's light has died. Perhaps, inside, she's as dark as her starjewel. Let's see.

  "My dear," Abdiel said aloud. "I want the Star of the Guardians. Hand it to me."

  No emotion on her face, but her right hand trembled.

  The mind-seizer knew where and how to hurt her. Leaning forward, he jabbed a mental knife into her subconscious, saw her eyes widen, her breath come quick, reacting to a horror only she could see. Her right hand moved to her breast, to the place where Abdiel had seen her secrete the starjewel after she had retrieved it from the corpse of the Adonian. The hand shook, went rigid, then fell suddenly to her lap. Her eyes closed: sweat trickled down her face.

  So, she isn't quite dead yet, the mind-seizer realized, feeling almost relieved. But she is close. A few more pricks and jabs, and she will hand over her starjewel, hand over her life without hesitation.

  The tram car brought them to the front gate of the late Snaga Ohme's estate. Abdiel was now faced with a problem. Mikael was dead. The mind-seizer had no one to pilot his 'copter and he couldn't do it himself. His problem was solved, however, relief coming from an unexpected source. Abdiel discovered an entire contingent of soldiers from Fort Laskar digging in, taking up positions around the Adonian's house.