Exile

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Novels:

Campbell Wood

Haydn of Mars – Book I of the Masters of Mars Trilogy

House Haunted

Kitt Peak

Moonbane

October

Queen of Mars – Book III of the Masters of Mars Trilogy

Sebastian of Mars – Book II of the Masters of Mars Trilogy

Skeletons

Summer Cool

Tales From the Crossroad, Vol 1

The Boy With Penny Eyes

The Masters of Mars – The Complete Trilogy

The Worms

Totentanz

West Texas

Collections:

Toybox

Halloween & Other Seasons

Hornets & Others

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Moonbane – Narrated by Kevin Readdean / Toybox - Narrated by Al Dano

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A
n electric shock went through Dalin Shar, ruler of a world, at the moment of his first true-love kiss.

He opened his eyes and found himself looking straight into Tabrel Kris's eyes, which were open also. He knew at that moment that she had felt the shock, too. Her eyes were copper-brown, wide, oval as almonds.

Then Tabrel closed her eyes and Dalin did also, and their lips pressed deeper into the kiss, somehow sealing what they had felt.

"Well," she said, pulling back away from him, suddenly aware of herself.

"Well indeed," Dalin said. He had recovered himself, he thought—though his voice was somehow hushed.

Color touched Tabrel's cheeks, the hollow of her neck. She said, "This is no way for a diplomat to act—"

"Not unless she means it-" Dalin began, then stopped because he knew he was being foolish, playing a game that was expected.

Taking a deep breath, he looked straight into Tabrel's eyes and said,
"I
meant it."

Her cheeks colored even deeper, and she was suddenly flustered.

He rescued her from her embarrassment with a laugh, realizing that she was, after all, a diplomat, and the game
was
expected. Taking her arm, he continued their tour of the gardens, helping her step gingerly from the ancient wooden gazebo where they had paused, at first just to admire the flaming colors of the bloomed roses which were trellised around the structure like a blanket of perfumed scent.

They took one of the many paths leading deeper into the gardens. Above, the afternoon sky had begun to fill with fat white clouds, like cotton. Cotton was, after all, what they had come to talk about.

"So I imagine that your quotas will be filled without difficulty?" Dalin said, sensing that Tabrel would feel more comfortable returning to the initial subject of her visit.

"Oh, yes," Tabrel said, seemingly distracted. But the color of her cheeks had returned to its healthy normal hue, and her attention seemed to follow. "Prime Minister Faulkner has already made arrangements with your cabinet. I would say the talks have gone . . . better than expected."

He sensed her hesitation as something more than the lingering effects of his kiss.

"You're troubled by this?" Dalin asked.

Suddenly she stopped and faced him on the path, amid the buzzing of insects. Accountably, with the
partial blotting of the sun by clouds, the spring afternoon had grown almost chilly.

She took his hands, and Dalin thought she meant to kiss him again until he saw the worry in her beautiful eyes.

"The negotiations went too easily," she said simply.

Dalin smiled. "And this is a bad thing?"

"Yes."

She had lowered her voice, which somehow troubled Dalin.

"Can we be heard here?" Tabrel asked abruptly.

Dalin shrugged. "I suppose so. If my guards are doing their duty. They are sworn to secrecy, of course."

"I wonder .. ."

Her frown was contagious, and Dalin could not help being annoyed at this sudden change in the afternoon's events. He thought fleetingly of the feel of her soft lips on his. An uncontrollable chill of pleasure rose up his back.

"Anything I can do to assure you . . ." he said. "It's not that," Tabrel said. "It's not you. But Minister Faulkner . . ."

Dalin laughed. "Minister Faulkner has been with me since I was a child. He was my father's closest adviser, and I consider him indispensable."

"There are things you aren't aware of . . ."

For a moment Dalin grew serious. "If you'll confide your fears in me . . ."

"Not here," she said; and suddenly, as if she had
dropped that bit of business into a file and closed it, her face became relaxed again. Dalin noticed that she still held his hands in hers and that the deep color had returned to blush her cheeks.

"Perhaps later?" Dalin said, and only the hint of a frown touched her features before she nodded.

The rest of the afternoon, in Dalin's memory, was golden. Their walk through the gardens was verbally uneventful, which meant pleasant and playful, but the air had been charged with a growing electricity between them. Tabrel delighted him with her knowledge of fauna and flora, comparing the species of bees to those on Mars, as well as Martian flowers, which, she claimed, were larger and even more colorful than those in Dalin's garden.

"That I won't believe! I have the finest gardeners in Afrasia to tend these flowers—look at that specimen!" He took two quick steps forward to cup the huge yellow-gold face of a sunflower in his hands, turning it away from the sun to face her. "Do you mean to tell me you have anything to match this on Mars?"

"Certainly," she said. "They grow twice as tall, and the colors are deeper because the carbon dioxide content in our atmosphere is higher."

"You must send me one, then, to prove it to me." She smiled. "It would be my pleasure, Sire."

He felt his own face heat with blush. "You must

bring it to me yourself."

"I—"

And then they each took a step, Dalin's cupping hands slipping from the wide sunflower to cup Tabrel's face, as once again their lips met, in a longer and deeper kiss.

"I don't know how this could have happened—" Tabrel whispered, and Dalin had the feeling she was talking more to herself than to him.

"Shhh," he soothed, and held her close.

"But—"

"It happened because it happened," Dalin said, hoping greatly that he didn't sound foolish. In his heart he knew that if he only spoke the truth he could not go wrong.

"I don't know how, with one kiss, but I believe I'm in love with you," Dalin said.

"Yes," she said.

"And in my heart," Dalin went on, still holding her close, "I've always believed that once I fell in love, it would be forever."

He felt her nod against his shoulder.

"That means, Tabrel, we are united for all time," Dalin whispered. "No matter what happens."

"Yes . . ." she whispered, in return.

As if a switch had been thrown within her, he felt her giving body go hard. She pushed suddenly away from him, hiding her tear-stained face from his sight.

"Tabrel!" Dalin shouted. "What's wrong?"

"I cannot!" she cried.

"What do you mean?"

"Please let me go!"

"Tabrel, there are things we must speak of!"

But she had already turned away from him and was running off through the gardens the way they had come, back toward the Imperial Palace.

She paused once to look back at him before running on, and Dalin Shar had the chilling impression that she was trying to memorize his features.

"Tabrel!"

"I cannot love you!"

And later, when the Martian delegation, including both Tabrel and her father, Senator Kris, did not show up for a banquet in the Imperial ballroom—a banquet both in their honor and to celebrate the signing of the much-anticipated trade pact—Dalin Shar learned not only that would the Martians be absent from the banquet, but that their shuttle had departed abruptly, hours before, for Mars.

S
taring at the fading glow of a pink Martian sunset, Prime Cornelian was disturbed.

It wasn't that his plans were not going well. They
were,
by any measure. The first and second phases of his campaign had just been completed, and in a few moments he would address the Senate and complete the third.

That was not the problem now.

There was the problem of Senator and Tabrel Kris, which was still unsolved—but it was not that, either.

It was something else, something at the very fringes of his brain, that bothered Prime Cornelian.

He ran the unnaturally long fingers of one hand along the sandstone ledge of the balcony he stood on. Below, the pink-red stone spread to either side in a graceful sweep; above, successive floors of the residence of the High Prefect of Mars, deceased not five minutes before of unnatural causes, narrowed to a single garret, topped with the Martian symbol of solidarity, the sickle within a circle of black iron.

It stood as a symbol for something whose memory Prime Cornelian was now ready to rejuvenate: the ancient, vicious battle for the planet Mars, fought in the middle of the twenty-first century between what had been then the Two Worlds, Earth and Mars. It was during those times that Martians had evidenced a bloodlust like none ever seen on any of the worlds, a bloodlust which had, in the end, gained them their independence.