A Prison Unsought (80 page)

Ng faced the Aerenarch, every cell of her being infusing her
words with sincerity: “We’ll do everything we can.”

He nodded, and the fiveskip engaged, hurling them back
toward Gehenna.

“We can’t take much more of this.” Mortan
Kree turned away from the screen as the fire from the plasma cannon ceased.
“And now there’s nothing to stop multiple assaults.”

Matilde Ho rubbed her aching eyes. “That ram they’re using
is amazingly effective. If they bring up a couple more—”

“Listen,” said the Panarch.

They fell silent. Timed with the battering impacts of the
ram, they heard a savage chant: “Arrr-KAD
(BOOM)
 . . .
Arrr-KAD
(BOOM)
 . . . Arrr-KAD
(BOOM)
 . . .”

Then the rhythm changed.

“ARRR
(BOOM)
KAD
(BOOM)
ARRR
(BOOM)
KAD
(BOOM) . . .”

“They’ve brought up another ram,” said Caleb.

“How much more time do we need?” Gelasaar asked.

“About an hour or so,” Matilde replied.

“Can the lock hold that long?” The Panarch’s voice was
light, unstressed, as though he were asking about the weather.

Matilde glanced at Kree, who shook his head.

The Panarch nodded. “Then that makes it simple.”

“No!” Yosefina shouted, hands clutched together under her
chin.

Kree’s heart labored under the shock of horror. The savage
chant of their attackers left no doubt of Gelasaar’s fate if he stepped outside
the ship.

But Gelasaar hai-Arkad straightened up, decision informing
every line of his thin frame. He was in this moment the old Gelasaar. The
Panarch had decided.

“Hear now the words of power, my friends, for in your hands
must lie the succession.” He held up his hand to prevent further objections;
Kree felt the force of his will as a palpable blow. “The Gehennans will be
satisfied with nothing less, and their rage is so great I doubt I’ll have any
time to regret my decision. In the meantime, the Navy approaches, and my son
still lives. I bind you all to this: bring him these words, that he may wield
that which is his.”

With that, Gelasaar hai-Arkad, forty-seventh successor of
the Emerald Throne, began to speak the words never shared before with those not
of the lineage of Jaspar Arkad. None of his listeners could look away from that
ardent face; the words seared their minds like hot iron, ineradicable.

Then the Panarch gestured toward the corridor to the lock.
“Let us endeavor,” he said.

Outside the shuttle, the sun had set and the light was
fading swiftly when the sky flared again; high overhead another star bloomed,
faded, and was gone, leaving only the mysterious, ever-brighter wings of light,
fluttering like the banners of an army. Londri looked up, rubbing her gritty
eyes and wondering what it meant, then looked down into the clearing as the
booming of the ram on the metal doors of the ship ceased. The smoke from the
fires banked around the shuttle made it hard to see.

She stepped over the brow of the hill, careless of danger
from the ship now that its fire-shooter was ruined. The ram crew was drawing
back warily as the doors slid open slightly. A white cloth flapped in the
opening until an arrow carried it away.

“Make them stop,” Stepan hissed urgently. “That is the
symbol for a parley.”

Londri gestured at the herald, who raised his horn to his
lips and blew a brief glissade. Again, the battlefield grew silent save for the
crackle of fires, the screams of the wounded, and the ever-closer pandemonium
of the battle with the Tasuroi. The soldiers around the shuttle drew away from
the line of fire from the slightly opened doors, taking up flanking positions.

Then a voice came from the ship—not booming like the first, unmagnified
by the arts of the enemy. “I wish to discuss the terms of my surrender.” The
voice carried a ring of authority despite its faintness, along with a slight
singsong tone.

Stepan’s breath harshened. “That is his voice,” he
whispered.

“Can we trust them?”

Stepan frowned, then brought his chin down in a slow nod.
“Whatever else one may say of him, he was always a man of his word.”

Londri strode toward the shuttle, followed by Stepan. The
soldiers around the battered vessel kindled torches from the dying oil-brush
fires; their flickering light painted the shuttle in tones of blood. She
stopped before the doors, awed despite herself by the mass of metallic wealth
looming above her.

“I am Londri Ironqueen,” she said, addressing the unseen
listeners within the machine. “Lord of the Kingdoms of Gehenna and all the
lands within the Splash.” She drew her sword and held it before her face. “By
the bright steel that is my birthright, by the courage that has sustained us
for seven hundred years against your hate, and by the wisdom of our mothers and
their mothers’ mothers, I demand to see you face-to-face.” She pointed at the
partly opened door with her sword. “I will not speak to a crack in a door.”

From within sounded a quiet laugh, then the doors opened and
a man emerged, jumping lightly to the ground despite his age. His outline was
blurred by wreaths of smoke; Londri stared and lowered her sword. This was the
Panarch of the Thousand Suns? Absolute ruler of more people than there were
grains of sand in the deserts beyond the mountains?

The man was slight in stature, and silver-haired. Old. Older
than Stepan. But with the eyes of a ruler herself, she discerned the lines that
the exercise of power and responsibility had graven in his face.

He walked between the ranks of soldiers drawn up to either
side, and stood within reach of her steel. He returned her gaze with grave
steadiness.

A mutter of anger rose from the surrounding host. Gath-Boru
flexed his massive hands, and his breath rasped in his throat. For the first
time in Londri’s life, she felt the helplessness of a leader who has used the
emotions of her followers all too well.

The man bowed, with the courtesy of one sovereign to
another. There was no trace of fear in his demeanor, no intimation that his
fate depended on anyone but her.

Then, at her side, Stepan moved. The Panarch glanced his
way, then he looked back, his eyes widening with shock. “Stepan? Stepan
Ruderik? What are you doing here?”

The words shocked Stepan like cold steel to the heart.
How dare he mock me!
He took a step,
then stopped, his anger faltering at the sincerity evident in Gelasaar’s
shocked gaze.

The Panarch reached out to grasp his hands, then stopped,
dropped his arms, and shook his head, pain and confusion on his face. “I don’t
understand, Stepan. I never signed a Warrant of Isolation for you. How . . .?”

That voice, never forgotten, brought back full force the
memories of Arthelion so long ago, and Stepan remembered that, whatever else
might have happened without his knowledge, Gelasaar had never lied to him—had
never, he was sure, lied to anyone.

And then the truth crashed in on him, the reality behind the
sneering hints his Abuffyd jailers had dropped on the long journey to isolation
here, their mocking revelation of the secret of Gehenna, and he knew that, no
matter that he had transgressed politically, so long ago, it was not Gelasaar
who had summarily condemned him to this hell. Whether it had been Semion or a
different enemy, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the man he had sworn
fealty to had not, after all, forfeited his love and respect.

Stepan stumbled, weeping, and embraced the man he had never
truly been able to hate.

After a time Gelasaar held him out at arm’s length and
looked searchingly at him. “But why are you here?”

Stepan shook his head, conscious of Londri’s anger and
impatience, and the ever-growing clamor of the Tasuroi—it sounded like Comori’s
forces were being driven back upon the clearing.

“There’s no time, Gelasaar.” He indicated
the Ironqueen, with Gath-Boru looming at her side. “You must speak for your
life now.”

The Panarch turned to Londri, his face again composed. “Will
you accept my life for theirs?” he asked, gesturing behind him at the shuttle.
He nodded skyward. “My son approaches, and I would have them carry to him the
means of his inheritance, and the rescue of my subjects from an evil greater
than any you can imagine.”

The Ironqueen remained silent, reflection of the fires
leaping in her eyes. Stepan sustained a shiver of awe as the wings of the
numinous brushed him: under a flaming sky, ringed by flickering torches, a
young woman in blood-red armor faced an old man in prison gray, but to his
eyes, they were sacraments of the archetypal energies of Totality, bridging the
gap of seven hundred years of isolation, uniting two sundered branches of
humanity too long held apart.

He held his breath as the Ironqueen raised her sword and
pointed it at the Panarch’s throat.

Her voice was quiet, as controlled as the man she faced. “I
can imagine no greater evil than the one you and your forebears have committed,
condemning those who never transgressed your laws to this hell.” She stepped
back, waved her sword in a half-circle parallel to the ground, taking in all
who stood around, watching.

“Look around you, Gelasaar
hai-Arkad, and see how the hand of your justice rests upon my people.”

The man’s eyes moved in obedience to her command, and the
Panarch took in the twisted limbs, distorted features, skin cancers, cataracts,
and all the panoply of the genetic struggle against a world not made for
humankind.

“Revenge is a kind of wild
justice,” said the Panarch finally. He spread his hands, exposing his body to
her sword. “This is little enough to satisfy such an indictment, but it is
yours, if you will but permit me to fulfill my last responsibility to my
subjects.”

“And what of my responsibilities?”
replied Londri. “What if I claim more than mere revenge and take wergild as
well for the lives you have wasted? She raised her sword and pointed past him
at the shuttle. “With that we can escape your prison.”

The Panarch shook his head. “No, you cannot. This vessel
cannot fly between the stars. You would merely exchange this prison for a
slightly larger one.” He turned his head toward the shuttle. “My people there
will not give you even that. Rather than surrender the vessel, they will
trigger the engines to destruction.”

“Then,” said the Ironqueen, “at
least I will deny your son his inheritance and obtain your death, and the
metals of the ship as well.”

“No,” said Stepan, recognizing that
he was the only one present able to bridge the gap of understanding between the
two rulers. “Your pardon, Majesty,” he said to Londri, “but the engines of this
vessel dispose the energies that light the stars. There would be nothing left
for leagues around; Comori Keep itself might not survive.”

A murmur rose from the listeners, and soldiers glanced
nervously at the shuttle.

From beyond the hills horns blew, rising above the noise of
battle. Gath-Boru raised his head, then motioned a herald over.

Londri and the Panarch faced each other, unmoving, as though
alone on the battlefield.

“Listen to me, Your Majesties,”
Stepan continued. “My College insists that there are no accidents when the
Archetypes move among us. You two have been brought together.” He faced the
Panarch. “My presence here clearly shows that isolation has too long served not
your justice, but others’ private ends.” He gestured upward. “And the secret of
Gehenna is broken forever. Will you not end it, in exchange for your life and
your son’s inheritance?”

Another murmur rose, attended by movement and the clatter of
weapons. The herald next to Gath-Boru blew a long interrogative on his war
horn, but Stepan paid it no mind. He turned to the Ironqueen. “It lies in your
hands to culminate your mothers’ long-held dream and end the isolation of your
people. Will you forgo revenge and obtain true justice instead?”

During the pause that followed, the light from the sky
flared on the faces of two sovereigns and those around them, dimming the
torchlight.

Then the Ironqueen spoke. “‘For then the best may be to cede
desire.’” She sheathed her sword. “So be it. I give you your life and your
succession. Will you give me justice?”

“There will be no more Isolates,”
said the Panarch, “and Gehenna will join the worlds of the Thousand Suns in
full equality. I pledge it on the honor of the Phoenix House.” He stepped
forward and held out his hand. Londri gripped it for a long moment.

And Stepan’s exultation turned to abject horror as, almost
in the same moment, a horn call rang out and a wood-fletched arrow sprouted in
the Panarch’s shoulder.
Tasuroi!

Then the clearing dissolved into fighting as the Elite Guard
of House Aztlan turned on their erstwhile allies, and the Tasuroi cannibals
poured into the clearing. Gath-Boru shouted commands as he threw himself
forward and picked the Panarch up in one massive arm. He started toward the
shuttle with a small detachment, carrying the wounded ruler of the Thousand
Suns, while the Ferric Guard coalesced around the Ironqueen and Stepan and
began to fight its way back to the main body.

“‘The traitor’s triumph forcibly
deny!’” the huge general shouted as the fighting carried him away from his
Queen. “We will hold the sky machine until it can launch.” He slashed at a
Tasuroi who lunged at him, cleaving his head in two.

“And we will be free!”

Anaris’s corvette scudded low over the planet, laying its
deadly cargo. “Sneak-missiles discharged,” reported the Tarkan at the Weapons
console.

In the main screen, coming over the limb of Gehenna, appeared
the crater near which the Panarch had been landed, a minute pockmark slipping
into the shadow of night. The matte-black missiles vanished as they fell away
from the ship, awaiting the signal that would wake them to deadly life,
undetectable until then.