King's Test (43 page)

"What is
it?" Stavros had his arm around her. She had gone deathly pale.

"Sagan!
He's aware of us; he knows what we're planning. He's on his way to
stop us. The swords! He's read our minds. We should have thought—"

"Too late,"
Danha interjected. "Let's move! With luck, we'll be gone long
before he can reach us."

They slid out
from the passage. Keeping behind the statue,

Maigrey looked
into the hallway. The mind-dead were standing in a knot near the
entrance to the royal chambers. They did not appear particularly
threatening, now that the royal guard was no longer a factor. No
weapons were trained on Augustus or the doctor, who stood in the
middle of the body-strewn hallway; both were unarmed, so neither was
dangerous.

The baby's
crying grew louder. Semele emerged from the royal chambers, attended
closely by a volubly protesting nurse.

"Her
Majesty has had a very difficult delivery! She shouldn't be out of
bed! You're endangering her life—"

"Her
Majesty's life will be in far more danger if she doesn't escape the
palace," one of the mind-dead answered. Maigrey marked him as
the leader and her first target. "I beg you to hurry, madam."
The mind-dead spoke to Semele. "Derek Sagan has murdered the
king. You and your family will be his next victims unless you
accompany us to safety."

"Sagan!"
Maigrey heard Semele's voice, heard it weak and dazed. "Sagan—a
murderer, a traitor?" She looked at her husband, her voice
growing firmer as she spoke. She held her baby in her arms. "I
don't believe it, Augustus. I don't believe it!"

Maigrey gripped
the bloodsword, raised her hand to give the signal.

Augustus went to
his wife, put his arm around her.

"Move on,
down the hallway," the mind-dead ordered. "We will follow
behind, to see that you are safe. You, too, Doctor."

Maigrey breathed
a sigh of relief, cast a look of grim exultation at her comrades.
Sending the king and queen on ahead would make the Guardians' task
much easier. She saw Augustus and Semele started on their way down
the hall, Semele holding her baby tightly in her arms, refusing to
give him to the nurse, who was fussing over her. Augustus walked with
her, his arm around and supporting her. The doctor moved along at the
new king's side.

Maigrey crept
out from behind the statue and began padding, soft-footed, down the
hallway. The mind-dead had spread out, standing in a line in front of
her, their backs to her, their attention fixed on the king and queen
walking down the hall. Suddenly, acting in concert, as one body, the
mind-dead raised their beam rifles.

Not prison! Not
taking them to a "place of safety"!

Too late,
Maigrey understood. An execution.

She yelled a
challenge, a scream of rage that might have come from the throat of
the barbaric, savage Amazon woman who, thousands of years before, had
defied Achilles on the walls of Troy. Running forward, she screamed
again, trying desperately to force the mind-dead to turn their
killing blasts on her. Beside her, Danha was thundering like Zeus;
Stavros fired his lasgun into the ceiling, filling the hallway with
lightning. He dared not fire at the mind-dead, for fear of missing
and killing the king.

The mind-dead,
acting with one single mind on one single purpose, ignored the fury
that was descending on them from behind. Taking deliberate aim, they
fired.

Maigrey's shout
accomplished something—it alerted Augustus. Looking back, he
saw the rifles raising and threw himself in front of his wife and
child in a desperate attempt to shield their bodies with his. The
blast of several beam rifles, aimed at point-blank range, blew him
apart.

The Guardians
reached the mind-dead. Maigrey swung the bloodsword, severed the head
from the shoulders of one. The headless trunk sagged and toppled to
the ground. The returning stroke of her sword caught another of the
mind-dead in the back, nearly sliced him in two. Her enemies out of
her way, Maigrey didn't pause. She trusted her comrades to deal with
the rest, as she had trusted them all her life. Her heart bursting
with pain, she ran toward the bloody mass in the center of the
hallway.

The doctor lay
dead, a hole blown in his back. The nurse was no longer recognizable
as a human being. Neither was Augustus. Maigrey, acting in
desperation, refusing to let herself think about what she was doing,
shoved aside the charred and bleeding chunks of flesh and bone that
had been her king in an effort to reach his wife.

Semele lay
face-down, her body curled around the baby in her arms. Maigrey
prayed to God that the blood on the woman's gown was that of her
husband, not her own. Gently, she slid her arm beneath her friend's
head and, turning it, lifted it.

Looking into the
eyes, she knew her prayer, for some reason passing her mortal
understanding, had not been granted. Life flickered in the eyes
faintly, but they were already staring far, far away and didn't see
Maigrey, didn't recognize her. One thing alone bound the woman to the
life she was fast leaving.

"My baby
..." she whispered. Then her head lolled heavily on Maigrey's
shoulder.

"Maigrey!"
It was Platus, shaking her.

Maigrey ran her
hand through Semele's shining black hair, pressed the head of her
friend to her breast. "No, Semele, no! Please . . . no!"

"The baby,
Maigrey! The baby's alive!" Platus gently removed the child from
the mother's lifeless grip.

Maigrey gazed
dazedly at the infant, who seemed to be swaddled in blood instead of
a blanket, and saw that the child was crying frenziedly. She hadn't
noticed. She held Semele in her arms, hugging the body close to her,
rocking the dead mother as the mother might have rocked her child.

Platus peeled
back the sodden fabric, gave the naked body a swift glance. "He's
all right! No burns." He paused a moment, looked to Danha and
Stavros, who had come to stand near. "We can still save the
child."

Maigrey didn't
move. She clung to Semele, buried her face in the black hair, and
wept.

"Maigrey,"
Platus said to her softly, insistently, conscious of time slipping
away, falling like the drip, drip of blood from the baby's blanket.
"Maigrey, we can save the child! But we must hurry."

Still she didn't
move. To do so, to lay the body down on the blood-covered floor
beside the desecrated flesh of Semele's husband, would be to grant
victory to death. If only they would leave her alone, let her rest
here and stay with her friend. . . .

Danha knelt
beside her, put his strong arm around her. "The king is dead,
Maigrey," he said, his huge hand reaching out to reverently
touch, as a priest might bless, the small, fragile head of the
fist-clenched, mewling infant. "Long live the king."

. . . wash this
blood off from my guilty hand.

William
Shakespeare,
Richard II,
Act V, Scene 6

Duty called
Maigrey back. Through closed eyelids, she seemed to see the light of
the Star of the Guardians shining brightly, undimmed by the horror,
untarnished by the blood splashed upon it. She kissed Semele's cold
forehead, lay the body gently down. Lifting the mother's
fast-chilling hand, Maigrey slid from the bloody fingers a ring made
of fire opals. She held the ring a moment to the lips that were
forever silenced, then tucked it securely into the folds of the
gore-spattered blanket that Platus had wrapped tightly around the
baby.

"What's the
quickest way to the passage that leads to the royal ship?" she
asked, speaking and moving briskly.

"His
Majesty's bedchamber," Platus answered without hesitation.
"There's a door inside the fireplace that leads directly to the
launching pad."

"The ship
will be guarded," Danha warned, voice grim.

"You can
deal with them," Maigrey returned. Her voice was lifeless,
without expression; it might have been the mechanical voice of a
'droid. She took a step down the hall, stopped when she felt Danha's
hand on her arm. She stared at him with eyes that didn't know him.

"Your
sword, Maigrey," he said, holding the bloodsword in his hand.

She stared at it
as if she had never seen it before, had no idea what to do with it.
She couldn't remember having worn it, couldn't remember taking it
off. Nodding, she accepted it back, started to insert the needles
into her hand.

"Maigrey,
wait," Platus called to her. "Don't you want to take the
baby?"

He held out the
child to her. Maigrey looked at the infant, who had suddenly ceased
to cry and was staring around him with a solemn and uncanny
intelligence.

"My arms
were meant to cradle the dead," she said. "Not the living."

She activated
the bloodsword, and the four Guardians, Platus carrying the child,
traversed the hall. The floor was slippery, wet with blood; they
moved with as much haste as they dared. Reaching the door to the
royal chambers, Platus and the others hurried inside, stopped halfway
through the entry hall when they realized that Maigrey wasn't with
them.

"Stay
here," Stavros ordered Platus, and hurried back to the doorway
in company with Danha.

Maigrey stood in
the doorway, her body straight and tall, staring into the shadows of
the death-drenched hall with eyes that held in them no more life than
those of the corpses around her.

"Go ahead,"
she said to them before they had opened their mouths. "Take the
baby someplace safe, someplace hidden. Watch over him. One day the
people will come to rue bitterly what they have done. They will be
glad to fall on their knees before their king."

"Maigrey,
you can't—"

"I can. I
must." Her eyes seemed to see them and know who they were for
the first time since she'd laid Semele's body to rest. "Sagan's
on his way here now. I'm the only one who can stop him. You know
that. Go on. You don't have much time."

"I'll
stay—" Danha rumbled.

"No."
Maigrey shook her head. "As you said, the ship will be guarded.
You'll both be needed. Platus can't fight; he has the child. Not that
he would be of much use anyway." She smiled slightly. "Don't
tell him I'm staying behind. Tell him I'll be joining you soon. You
understand, don't you, Stavros?"

"Yes,"
Stavros answered bitterly. "And Platus will understand all too
well. He won't leave you."

"He has no
choice. He is a Guardian. Remind him that he has another
responsibility now. He must raise up a king." Her fond, sad gaze
encompassed both of her friends. "
Dominus vobiscum.
God
be with you."

It seemed
Stavros would have continued to argue, but Danha clamped his hand
around his friend's arm, silenced him.
"Et cum spiritu tuo,
Maigrey. And may the spirit be with you."

Maigrey watched
them leave, heard hushed voices in the distance, her brother's raised
in protest, Danha shouting him down. Apparently, whatever Danha said
convinced Platus to accompany them. Maigrey, though she listened
intently, heard nothing more. Her brother, after all, hadn't argued
very long or hard.

Platus would be
good as both a father and a mother to the boy. He had been gentle as
a mother to the little sister who had never known one. He'd comforted
her in those first few days at the Academy when she was homesick and
lost and afraid. He'd been patient and kind, an eye in the storm of
her tempestuous tantrums. He'd been understanding, even when he
hadn't understood. All he had ever wanted in return was her love.
Would it have cost her so much to have given it to him?

Maigrey stood in
front of the door, in company with the dead. The hallway was hushed,
silent, the spirits having long since left the frail, mortal bodies
to present themselves to God and receive His judgment, His comfort,
His wrath. Maigrey heard footsteps, but only in her soul. Sagan
wasn't here yet, although he was coming nearer with each breath she
drew, each heartbeat. If she could have stilled one or the other, she
would have. Her life was worth nothing to her now, but it was worth
something to others and so she held on to it, ready to spend it to
buy the only thing left of value—time.

Nothing was
going as it should have. A bloodless coup had turned into a
bloodbath. Sagan, who could never remember any time in his life when
he had
not
been in control, had lost all control.

"The king
is dead, the Guardians are being slaughtered," he fumed aloud to
himself. "Abdiel and Robes plotted this between them—genocide,
the decimation of the Blood Royal."

Sagan withdrew
in a blazing fury from what had been the banquet hall and was now a
tomb. If he had been at all sickened and appalled by the mass murders
of the helpless, he had sacrificed his better feelings on the altar
of his raging anger, watched them blacken and die, leaving nothing
but cold ash. The thought had occurred to him that he himself could
be in danger, but a glance around the antechamber and the lower
hallways of the palace caused him to discard the notion. His troops,
whose training he had personally overseen during the last month, were
disciplined and organized.

"No, Robes
won't harm me. He doesn't dare. He needs me. And he's afraid of me."
Sagan considered this fact with regret. He had truly admired and
respected Peter Robes; he had believed in the man and in his cause.
Admiration and respect were dead now, lying cold and charred upon the
altar.

As for the
cause, it, too, was dead. Derek Sagan had looked into the faces of
the people and had seen nothing to admire. He'd made a mistake; he
could admit that to himself. What made the mistake easier to accept
was that now he saw how much he stood to gain. The phoenix would
truly rise out of the ashes and its wings would be golden.