Ghost Legion (30 page)

Dion regarded the Warlord coldly. "You have no need to worry, my
lord. I can protect myself from him."

Sagan glanced pointedly at the king's hand. "Your cousin has
entered your mind, Your Majesty. Have you entered his?"

"Thank you, my lord, for coming," said Dion. "You have
leave to go."

Brother Paenitens pulled his hood lower over his head. "God
bless and keep Your Majesty," he intoned, bowing low. His voice
was muffled. Dion couldn't tell whether or not the blessing was meant
in earnest or made in bitter mocking.

"Wait, my lord." Dion stopped Sagan as he was about to open
the door. "What should I tell the archbishop? He'll be expecting
your return. What should I say?"

Sagan raised his head; the dark eyes, with their flickering flame,
met the king's.

"Ask him to pray for me, Your Majesty."

Bowing again, Brother Paenitens was gone.

Thou hast not half the power to do me harm

As I have to be hurt.

William Shakespeare,
Othello,
Act V Scene ii

Dion advanced several paces down the corridor until, rounding a
corner, he was out of sight of his guards. Then he came to a stop.
The door to his stateroom stood before him, closed and sealed. Behind
it, Kamil waited patiently for him. His dinner was cold by now, but
that didn't matter. He had no appetite left.

He remained standing where he was, needing to be by himself, to
assimilate his thoughts, try to recover from the shock of this news.
It reminded Dion of the time he'd been wounded during the
adrenaline-pumped excitement of battle on board the
Defiant.
He hadn't even known he'd been hit until someone pointed it out,
until he saw the blood staining his sleeve.

While he'd been talking with Sagan, the tension of the constant
mental struggle waged between the two strong, opposing wills had
forced Dion to keep his thoughts focused on the combat. Sagan would
have been quick to take advantage of any display of weakness on
Dion's part, quick to rout, conquer, and bend the younger man to
doing the elder's will.

Dion was exhausted after the encounter, emotionally and mentally
drained. But at least he'd held his ground, stood firm, refused to
retreat from his convictions.

"I wonder if he respects me for it?" Dion asked himself
wearily. "I wonder if he will ever respect me? And why do I care
what he thinks of me anyway? Why am I constantly seeking his
approval? I have the power he had and more. I am what he wanted to
be. And I attained my success through peaceful means, not the bloody
war he urged me to fight. I hope to be a better ruler, a better man
than he was. Yet, once, just once, I'd like to hear him say to me,
'Well done.'"

Dion sighed. "I wish I could talk to Kamil about it. Perhaps I
will. She wouldn't tell anyone. She'd die before she'd betray me. But
then, I'd have to tell her everything—about my uncle. ___"
Dion grimaced, sickened, repulsed. "She wouldn't think any less
of me. It wasn't
my
fault. I wonder if my father knew anything
about what was going on? Still, it's a shameful, sordid, repugnant
thing to have to reveal about one's own kin. No, Sagan's right . . ."

Do not tell your wife ... or your mistress.

The Warlord's remonstration came back to Dion; again it made his face
burn.

He was guessing, Dion decided. He couldn't possibly know the truth.

Dion stood up straight, critically examined his reflection in a steel
bulkhead. He decided his face would pass even Kamil's loving
scrutiny, and started to place his hand upon the security plate that
would scan his palm, permit him to enter.

What makes your crime different from your uncle's?

Dion drew his hand away abruptly. Who had spoken? Sagan? Or some part
deep inside of him; some part the moralists would undoubtedly term
his conscience?

"Of course it's different," he reassured himself. "Our
love is not incestuous! Not a sick obsession. It's love. I love Kamil
and she loves me. We were meant to be together. Only a trick of fate
keeps us apart. We're not hurting anyone else. And how can I break
vows that held no meaning for me to begin with? Our love is right.
Everything else in the universe may be wrong, but our love is right.
. . ."

Resolutely, he placed his hand on the scanning pad. His
identification verified, the door slid open.

Kamil shut the book she had been reading. She advanced toward him
with a smile that soon faded. Apparently he had not arranged his face
as carefully as he had hoped.

"What is it, Dion? What's happened? You can't tell me," she
said quickly, sparing him the need to respond. "I'm sorry. I
shouldn't have asked. Do you want me to leave? I—"

"My dear!" Dion took her in his arms, held her close,
absorbing her strength, her comfort. "No, don't go. Not now. Not
ever. I can't tell you what's going on. But it doesn't matter. Just
let me hold you."

They clung to each other in silence. Dion could imagine her shield,
held over him, protecting him from the blows aimed at him, giving him
time to recover his strength, pick up his weapons, and return to the
battle.

I will take this time, he decided. I should return to the palace, I
suppose. I should inform Dixter of what I've learned. I should place
the admiral in touch with Sagan.

But that can wait until tomorrow. Until the morning. It's bad enough
that I must cut short my time with Kamil. I will have this night with
her. I need this night. ...

"Your Majesty." A voice, over the commlink.

Dion kissed Kamil's hair. Holding her, keeping her near, he answered.
"Yes, D'argent?"

"Admiral Dixter needs to speak with you, Your Majesty. He is on
the vidcom. It's .. . confidential."

Dion sighed. Kamil slid out from his embrace. "No, don't go!"
he whispered. "Can't this wait until morning, D'argent?"

"The Admiral says the matter is one of extreme urgency, Your
Majesty."

"I better talk to him. Hopefully I won't be long."

"I'll be here."

"I wish . .." he said, pausing, "I wish sometimes I
was ... we were ... ordinary. Like Tusk and Nola. Together all the
time. Our biggest worry whether or not the collection agency was
going to repossess the vid machine."

She didn't answer, lowered her eyes.

Dion sighed again. "It's humanity's curse, I suppose—never
to be happy with what we have. Always wanting something else. When I
was nobody, I didn't want to be. Now that I'm king, I wish I was
nobody again."

"Go deal with your latest crisis, Your Majesty," Kamil told
him softly. Kissing him on the cheek, she picked up her book and
disappeared into the bedroom.

Arranging his face again, Dion walked back out into the corridor.
D'argent was waiting for him, as was the captain of the guard.

"Yes, Captain?" said Dion, moving toward the communications
room.

"The electrical disruption of the systems in the audience
chamber has been fixed."

"Very good, Captain."

"We didn't fix it, Your Majesty," said Cato dourly. "It
... seems to have fixed itself, so to speak."

"As long as it's working, Captain. I wouldn't be overly
concerned with it. Instruct the technicians to examine it when we
return to base." "Yes, Your Majesty." Cato paused,
stared at his king, as if wanting to add something else.

Dion met the captains eyes, held them.

Cato's gaze wavered uncertainly.

"Was there something else on your mind, Captain?" Dion
asked, pausing outside the door to the communications room.

"No ... no, Your Majesty."

"Then you have leave to return to your duties, Captain,"
said the king.

"The admiral has requested that this conversation be kept
strictly confidential, sir," D'argent repeated. "You will
need to access the transmission yourself, highest level security. I
will be in room, if you desire anything."

"Thank you, D'argent," said Dion, keeping his voice even,
level.

He entered the room, shut and sealed the door, and began to go
through the complicated process of opening the secured channel. It
took some time. He waited with enforced patience while all systems
checked and double-checked that the channel was secure, waited still
longer while the transmission was scrambled, coded at Admiral
Dixter's end, then descrambled, decoded at Dion's end. The king hoped
the transmission wasn't a long one; he could be here for hours.

As it turned out, it was short. All too short.

"Your Majesty." Dixter's face appeared on the vidscreen. He
looked exhausted; his skin was gray, face haggard. "I have bad
news, I am afraid."

"Of course," Dion muttered to himself. "Nobody ever
comes to me with urgent, top-secret good news. Yes, sir, what is it?"
he asked aloud, bracing himself.

"The queen has left, Your Majesty."

Dion stared, perplexed, not understanding. So what if Astarte had
left the palace? She left all the time. Her schedule of public
appearances was almost as demanding as the king's.

He frowned. "I am afraid, admiral, that I fail to see—"

Dixter shook his head, forgot, in his worry, that he was speaking to
his king. "What I'm trying to say, son, is that your wife has
left
you."

So farewell hope, and with hope, farewell fear,

Farewell remorse! All Good to me is lost ...

John Milton,
Paradise Lost

Sagan walked rapidly across the tarmac, keeping to the shadows,
leaving as he had come. He walked with his head covered, his arms
crossed, hands clasping his wrists beneath the long, flowing sleeves
of his habit, as was the custom among the brethren of the Order of
Adamant.

He did not, however, walk toward the transport which had brought him
to this planet, a transport owned by the Church, operated by a hired
crew that ferried the priests of St. Francis to wherever in the
galaxy their calling took them. Sagan had need of thought and he did
not care to do his thinking under the curious stares of the night
watch.

The hour was extremely late. An ancient clock in one of the towers
chimed twice; the bell's echoes were almost immediately swallowed up
by the darkness. The spaceport, though brightly lit, was quiet. No
flights were expected in or out until morning. Sagan skirted the
lights, kept out of sight of the night watchman, who was chatting
companionably with one of the cleaning crew.

Numerous paths and walkways led from the spaceport to the Academy
buildings. Some were old, others new, added during the phase of
building and reconstruction that had been started under the auspices
of die new king. Sagan chose one of the older paths, one he could
walk without thinking about where it would take him, retracing the
footsteps of the brash and arrogant youth who had walked that path
some thirty years before.

The campus was deserted, halls of learning empty, classrooms dark.
The night was clear; the path was easy to see, lit at intervals by
glowing lamps that shed circles of light along the walkway and by the
lambent light of moon and stars. Sagan did not walk aimlessly. He had
his destination in mind and, though it was in one of the new
buildings, he had, with characteristic foresight and planning,
studied a revised map of the Academy grounds and determined the route
to take to reach it. His feet kept stolidly to the path; his thoughts
were free to rampage.

He was angry, and he found it convenient to focus his anger on Dion.
Why couldn't he see the danger—the extreme danger—he was
in? They were all in?

"Certainly I didn't expect you to attack and destroy Vallombrosa
without warning," he muttered. "I knew when I proposed such
a plan you would reject it ... as you should," he admitted
somewhat grudgingly. "Though it would have been simple. Detonate
the bomb in what, by all accounts, is an uninhabited region of the
galaxy. Tell the people you are acting to rid the galaxy of a heinous
weapon. Outwardly you appear the champion of peace; all the while
destroying your enemy completely, utterly, with no one left alive to
tell the tale.

"No, Dion, I didn't expect you to take the easy way out. I would
have been disappointed in you if you had," he added, with the
shadow of a dark smile on his lips.

The smile straightened to a thin, narrow line. "But you should
have taken the starjewel. You should have taken it three years ago,
when I offered it. You should have taken it now. A foolish move, my
king. Not logical, not practical. It is all very well for a king to
hold an olive branch in one hand, but he must hold steel in the
other."

Three years ago. He had offered Dion the starjewel. Offered it over
Maigrey's grave.

He thought back, tried to recall the king's words to him then, but he
couldn't. Time had stopped for Derek Sagan the moment he had looked
into her eyes and seen only the cold reflection of the stars. What
had happened to him after that came to him in brief flashes,
illuminated vividly by jagged bursts of pain. The rest was lost in a
dark, chaotic storm of agony, grief, and howling silence. He
remembered offering the starjewel, remembered that Dion had refused
to take it. But what words he had used, what reason he gave were
obliterated.

The king had left the Warlord alone with the dead. Sagan's body and
mind had acted, dragging his unwilling soul along behind. He had
fought hordes of Corasians in his efforts to return to his own
galaxy. Fought them brilliantly, or so he presumed, simply because he
would not have survived otherwise. He had been wounded—severely,
they told him later. He didn't know. He didn't remember.

It was Brother Miguel who had found him, and they had proven to be
each other's salvation. The sole survivor of Abdiel's plot to trap
Sagan, Brother Miguel had seen his brethren murdered at die hands of
the fearsome mind-dead. The brother had escaped by a mere fluke and,
terror-stricken, had fled to the tombs far below the abbey, where he
had hidden in fear until he had been discovered by Brother Fideles.