The Lost King

by Margaret Weis

  "Yes, sir," Bennett said. "Would you like some coffee, sir?"

  "No, Bennett. I'd like to stay drunk."

  "Yes, sir. Very good, sir."

  "Find Captain Link and tell him to report to HQ on the double. And send Tusk back in."

  "That will be difficult, I'm afraid, sir. He's passed out."

  "Good. That'll make it easier. Take him back to his plane. And tell XJ that Tusk's grounded until further notice."

  "Yes, sir."

  Dion started to stand up, but Dixter waved him down. "Bennett'll take care of Tusk. You stay here. You should . . . know the rest. While I'm still sober enough to tell it."

  "Yes, sir." Dion subsided back onto the couch.

  They heard a sound as if someone had thrown a glass of water into someone else's face. A groan and then a scuffling sound and a crash, swearing. The door slammed and everything but the rustling maps were quiet. Even Dixter's voice, when he spoke, seemed to Dion not so much to disturb the silence but to flow into it and become a part of it.

  "I've never told anyone about that night at the palace. And it's not me talking now. It's the booze. I lied when I said I wasn't there the night of the revolution. The night that came to be called 'die Freiheit.' Freedom! Hah! I was there." Dixter lifted the brandy bottle with a shaking hand and poured. Most of the liquor made it into the glass.

  "God help me! I was there."

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Where sceptered Angels held their residence And sat as Princes . . .

  John Milton, Paradise Lost

  "Minas Tares—the royal city. God, it was beautiful. Maybe it was everything else they say now—decadent and extravagant. People living in unimaginable wealth while millions went hungry. All I know is that for me it was the center of everything that was wonderful and lovely. Music, art, literature, architecture—the best came to Minas Tares. It was all destroyed in the name of 'democracy.'

  "We knew what was coming, I think. The king knew, certainly. But he either didn't want to believe it or he couldn't decide what to do. Starfire was a good man, but he was weak. His ministers weren't much better. As Yeats says, 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.'" Dixter stared at the brandy, then drained the glass all in one gulp. He closed his eyes, drew a breath, and expelled it in a sigh. "Anyway ... I was there that night for two reasons. One, I'd just been made a general. Me and about five hundred other human and alien commanders from all over the galaxy. It was quite a ceremony. 'For meritorious valor.' The king himself pinned the stars on my collar.

  "So I was on Minas Tares for that, and I was there because she was there. It was the night the Golden Squadron was being honored by their peers-—the Guardians—for their battle against the Corasians on some planet, somewhere. Maigrey was attending, but her most important reason for being there was to be with her best friend, Semele Starfire, wife of the crown prince, who was due to have her baby anytime."

  Dixter didn't look at Dion when he spoke. The boy flinched but kept quiet. It seemed to him that the general had forgotten he was there, had forgotten their danger. Dion remembered but he didn't want to remind the general, fearful of breaking the spell. Besides, to Dion, it wasn't danger, it was deliverance.

  "I guess you've heard all about the traitors within the Royal Army who detected the rebel fleet entering orbit around the planet and didn't report it. The base fell. There wasn't even a fight; most of the soldiers joined the rebels. When Robes's army held control of the city, he ordered them to march on the palace.

  "I was in the palace ... or rather on the grounds. The palace was a city in itself. Beautiful buildings, tree-lined boulevards, galleries, shops, restaurants. Thousands of people lived and worked there. It was filled with light and music, day and night. I was there by invitation—it was the only way you could get in. Maigrey's invitation, of course. She wanted to congratulate me. We were going to celebrate. "

  Dixter reached for the bottle, but it was empty. He gripped it, hard, and stared into the past.

  "The rebels hit the palace with everything they had. I'd just come through the first series of gates when the first wave struck. I knew in an instant what it was—there'd been rumors and civil unrest for months. Some of the king's own personal troops switched over to the rebel side. Most of them stayed loyal, though. It was chaos. No one knew whose side anybody was on. People shot each other down like dogs in the name of freedom.

  "We were outnumbered a thousand to one. They came out of the skies, poured like rats up through the sewers. What fighting there was wasn't resistance so much as plain frustrated anger. I was unarmed but I grabbed a lasgun from a corpse and fought until what I figured would be my end. A mortar round saved my life. The explosion blew me into a ditch. It was nighttime. In the confusion, no one noticed me, or if they did they must have thought I was dead. When I came to, it was all over.

  "I could see flames on the horizon and I knew it was the palace. My one thought was Maigrey. I took the uniform off the body of a rebel solider, a sergeant, and put it on, grabbed his blaster, and headed for the palace.

  "The night's like a horrible dream to me. I'd been hurt in the explosion, but the pain didn't seem to register. It just made things unreal. Still, I don't think that even death will blot out my memory of what I saw that night. Robes's troops were out of control—drunk on liquor and blood. Rape, torture, burning, looting—I saw it all and yet I didn't see it. I made myself not see it because I knew if I looked I'd open fire and keep on blasting until they cut me down. I had one idea in my mind—Maigrey.

  "After a while, I welcomed the confusion, because it let me go where I pleased. I kept heading straight for the palace. I could see it now—its steelglass spires glistening in the flames. Whenever I came up on someone who seemed halfway sober, I asked what had happened there. I heard all sorts of gruesome rumors—the king was dead, murdered. Everyone in the palace was dead, the Guardians slaughtered. One soldier came past, wearing one of those blue robes. It was torn and black with blood. I don't know how I stayed on my feet. The unreality, I suppose. Part of me still couldn't believe it was happening.

  "When I reached the palace, I got a shock. Here, everything was under control. The troops were cold sober, disciplined— an army, not a mob—and they were standing guard against their own. I found out later who their leader was. I might have expected. Derek Sagan. They all wore that new crest of his—the phoenix rising from flames.

  "I picked out a side entrance and waited for my chance to get inside. Fortunately, a brawl among the rebel troops drew the guards away from their posts. The soldiers'd heard rumors of loot inside the palace and were trying to break in. The guards beat them back with the butt ends of their guns or stunned them. During the confusion, I slipped through the door.

  "I'd been in the palace before—Maigrey'd taken me around. But I damn near didn't recognize the place. Some of it had burned; Sagan's troops were busy putting out the fires. There'd been explosions, holes blown in the walls, floors knocked down, staircases hanging out in the middle of no where. I was standing there, staring, trying to orient myself, when one of the soldiers came up to me.

  "'What's your business here, Sergeant?'

  "'Dispatches.' I spoke automatically. I don't even remember thinking about it. I put my hand over my breast pocket. 'For the commander.'

  I didn't care anymore. I knew, now, she was dead. I prayed she was dead, after what I'd seen. I was dead myself, inside, and I just plain didn't care. The soldier looked at me and must have decided that since I was sober I was telling the truth. He motioned me on.

  "'Commander Sagan's in the computer center. Up those stairs and turn to your right.'

  "Sagan! My mind reeled. Derek Sagan. A traitor. Of course, by now he knew me. Maigrey'd introduced us. I wondered if she'd known he was going to betray his king. If so, that alone must have killed her.

  "You can be sure that, once the soldier was out of sight, I didn't go in Sagan's direction. I made my way to the hal
l where she'd told me they held the royal banquets. The chamber was enormous. It took up almost half one whole floor. And it was filled with bodies. The Guardians hadn't been armed, you see. That was part of the plot.

  "I searched among the dead for what seemed like hours. I saw the body of the king, lying in his throne. Robes put it out that Starfire had died of a heart attack, but that wasn't true. I saw the hole—burned through the crown, burned through his skull. But I didn't find Maigrey. I couldn't find any of the Golden Squadron, and I began to hope. I went out into the corridors again, searching—for what I'm not sure. There was even this crazed idea in my head to go find Sagan and ask him.

  "It was quiet in the palace; the silence seemed eerie after the noise outside. There was almost no one around—a few soldiers moving about on business, a few standing guard, but most of them were outside. There were no medics, tending to the wounded. There were no wounded. Only corpses. Whenever someone passed me I looked purposeful. I walked quickly, like I knew where I was going. Amazing, what that'll do for you.

  "Not really thinking much about it, I made my way to the king's private living rooms. Of course, I'd never been up there. I couldn't have entered now except his own personal guards were dead. I'm not sure why I came. It seemed to me later that I was stumbling around in a fog of pain and despair, but I guess I must have had some kind of rational thought process. I think it was in my mind that if Maigrey could have escaped she would have gone looking for her friend, Semele. And that would have brought Maigrey here. And it was here I found her."

  Dixter's voice was thick, but his words were clear, obviously coming from somewhere deep inside him that the liquor couldn't touch.

  "She was lying across a doorway, the bloodsword in her hand, as if she'd been holding that door against attack. Her hair covered her face and it was matted with blood. I sank down onto the floor beside her. There was no strength left, nothing left in me. I knew she was dead and I was thankful she'd died quickly. I lifted her hand and put it to my lips and the flesh was warm. That jolted me. I found a pulse. She wasn't dead!"

  Dixter looked at Dion, bringing the boy back into focus. "She wasn't dead. Do you understand? None of the other wounded had been allowed to survive. Everyone had been ruthlessly slaughtered. But not her. Of all the things I saw that night, that seemed to me to be the strangest. Her enemy had struck her down and then left her. But I couldn't take time to think about it.

  "The wound on her face was terrible, I could tell that much, though I didn't dare examine it. Her blood-soaked hair had stuck to it, formed a kind of bandage over it. Carefully I stripped off her blue robes—that would have marked her for death for certain—and I dressed her in the clothes of a murdered nurse, whose body I'd seen lying in the hallway. I carried her out of the palace.

  "Once back in the confusion outside, I was in more danger than when I'd been in the palace. But when anyone stopped me, I leered and joked about my prize' and said I was just looking for a quiet place where I could have some fun. No one tried to take her from me. I think they thought she was dead and I was some sort of crazed pervert.

  "A terrible storm was raging. Rain fell in torrents; the lightning was brighter and more deadly than the artillery. God must be really pissed, I thought. But I guess He wasn't mad at me, because I carried her safely through the turmoil to the hospital in the city.

  "It was hell in there. You can imagine. The rebels had taken it over. They were permitting their own people and civilians be treated, but I saw them kill a wounded royal officer, who was brought in on a stretcher. Fortunately, my stolen uniform gained me safe passage.

  "When the doctor examined Maigrey, he saw the starjewel hanging around her neck. There was a nurse and another young doctor with him. They all saw it and they all looked at each other. I held my breath. The doctor glanced around, saw the rebel soldiers standing right outside the door of the emergency room.

  "This woman's dead," the doctor said. 'I need this space for the living. Get the body out of here.'

  "I was on my feet. The doctor, walking past me, jabbed me hard, in the ribs. 'Shut up and wait for me in there!' he hissed, nodding at the visitor's room. The nurse drew a sheet up over Maigrey's body, covering her face, and she and the young doctor wheeled her out right past the rebels.

  "Dazed, I went into the waiting room. Somebody cleaned and dressed my wounds. That was the first I think I knew I'd been hit. I sat there in a stupor for hours. Finally, the doctor came to find me. He led me to a ward filled with wounded. Maigrey was there, her face bandaged. The nurse I'd seen with her handed me a medicine bottle. Inside, swathed in cotton, was the starjewel. I heard later they'd operated on Maigrey in the morgue.

  "When she came out of the sedation, she looked around and seemed just as amazed as I'd been to discover she was alive. She asked me where I'd found her, what had happened. I told her I'd found her lying in a doorway, alone.

  "'There was no one else?' she persisted. 'Not Platus? Not Stavros or Danha. Not . . .' she hesitated before she spoke, 'not a baby?'

  "When I told her no, she seemed relieved and lay back. 'Forget I asked you that,' she said, gripping my hand tightly. 'Promise me, John.' I promised.

  "She didn't say anything else to me after that. She just lay there, holding on to my hand, staring into nothing. A few days later, when she was stronger, I asked her what had happened in the palace that night. The doctor had told me she might feel better if she talked it out. But she only shook her head.

  " 'I don't remember, John. I've tried, but I don't remember anything except— I don't remember anything.'

  "The next day, when I came to visit, she was gone. She'd fled in the night. Then came the news report that Maigrey Morianna, former Guardian and enemy of the people, had been attempting to escape in a stolen spaceplane. She'd been shot down over Minas Tares.

  "I managed to make my way off-planet and I started life over, though lots of times I wondered why I bothered. But years pass, wounds heal. The pain subsides and you find out you can laugh again. But it's never quite the same. Never quite the same."

  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 tryi
ng 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."

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  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.